File:The history of mankind (1896) (14763927385).jpg

Identifier: historyofmankind01ratz (find matches)
Title: The history of mankind
Year: 1896 (1890s)
Authors: Ratzel, Friedrich, 1844-1904 Butler, Arthur John, 1844-1910
Subjects: Ethnology Anthropology
Publisher: London, Macmillan and co., ltd. New York, The Macmillan co.
Contributing Library: Wellesley College Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Wellesley College Library

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y of the creator,that he first made men go on all fours, and pigs upright. But this annoyed thebirds and reptiles, and they called a meeting, at which the lizard was foremost indemanding a change, while the wagtail strongly opposed. The lizard forced hisway through, crawled up a coco-palm, and jumped down on the back of a pig,making it drop on to its fore-legs. Since then pigs go on all fours, men upright.But the value of these traditions is quite misunderstood, if, as for obvious reasonsthe missionaries are apt to do, we see in these spirits, who at bottom are 312 THE HISTORY OF MANKIND cosmogonic figures, only the heroes of fairy tales. The Polynesian legend of thefishing up of the land from the depths of the sea takes the following form in Yap :Mathikethik went out fishing with his two elder brothers. First, he hooked upcrops of all sorts, and taro ; then the island of Fais. His hook is kept by thepriests ; and since, if it were destroyed, Fais also would disappear, the inhabitants
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-__~— - F 0 (i.;, * \ i l^1 &;($fmßt-: ^M S^ - - ?- Tahitian idols, carved in wood—one-tenth real size. (London Missionary Societys Collection. of that island are in constant subjection to the menaces of the Yap chiefs. Thuscan a great piece of cosmogonic imagery sink to the level of trick and superstition.The connection of creative activity with sun and moon, still so clear inPolynesia, has become in Micronesia quite legendary. In Pelew they relate howa man and his wife, tired of staying in that island, went to the stone in Eymelijkwhence they sprung, and called on the moon. It approached, and they climbedon to a serpents neck, and so reached the moon, where they may now be seen.Other sun and moon notions take a similarly odd form. When the moon wanes,sorcerers are eating it in dough. The sun shines at night in another country.Once upon a time four men in Pelew, seeing the sun setting, leaped hastily into RELIGION IN OCEANIA 31 a canoe. They went on till they got to the deng

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