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.

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    hood and having a chimney made up of pottery vessels with the bot¬ toms knocked out. The ancient subterranean or pit houses un¬ covered at Luna, New Mexico, had the fireplace near the center of the circular pit, off center, it is thought, on account of the ladder by which exit and entrance was effected through a combination door and smoke hole. Farther south the Pima fireplace was placed under the ramada or branch bower in front of the hut. It was sometimes protected from the wind by a wing wall of mud extending about two-thirds of the way around the fire, and a wooden rack is placed over the fire to set cooking vessels on. In the fires in the windbreak houses of the Pima three stones are placed in the fire for a similar purpose. Attention will be called to these features in the discussion of the stove. In Mexico, generally, the fire was placed outside the door of the house. In Colombia, at Panquita, in the mud huts the fire was placed in the middle of the room between three stones. The Caribs of British Guiana had a fire outside the house. The Caribs of Dominica built their fire under the shedlike structure of their houses. The larger communal structures of northern South America southward, which consist generally of a roof on posts, had a house fire in the center or near the hammocks of their occupants. In the communal house at the junction of the Uapes and Rio Negro, Brazil, there was a fireplace to each family.31 To the south in this vast continent (Chaco, Patagonia) the outside fire was common. The Fuegians in their most inhospitable region made little use of house fires, but the Yakgan Tribe built conical wigwams with the hearth in the center.32 This sketch merely shows some of the envi¬ ronmental influences which governed the placing of the house fire. In the east and west extending Old World the picture becomes more complicated. In Europe the subject will have to be discussed under the stove warming and cooking devices as improvements on the home fire. Vestiges of earlier methods, however, have survived in less- advanced groups of peoples. In general, north Europe reflects in all its arts the lower winter temperature, and southern Europe the con¬ ditions which obtain in warmer climates and are similar to those of the Near East. In Persia the fireplace is put in the middle of the room and con¬ sists of a deep, round hole in the floor, in which charcoal and cow dung are burned.33 This form is used by the lower classes. William de Rubruquis, on his visit to the Grand Khan at Mangou, Northern Tartary, in 1254, writes that in the center of the apartment 31 Alfred Russell Wallace. Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro, London, 1853, pp. 275-277. 32 Journ. Anthrop. Inst., London, 1886, vol. 15, p. 144. 32 Woman's Work for Women, January, 1888, p. 11, and October, 1888, p. 259.