These subtle and complex notions are by no means to be expressed by the conventional words _magic_, _animism_, etc., loosely thrown about by anthropologists.
Pp. 47 and 52. _Weaving._--The art of platting, which carries in it the germ of the art of weaving, is of immemorial, undiscoverable antiquity. There can hardly have been a time when men did not weave together twigs or reeds to form a rude tent covering--a primitive house. And one proof of the immense antiquity of this practice is given by the numerous names for twigs, reeds, etc., in different languages which are derived from words signifying to twist or weave. The word _weave_ itself (Ger. _weben_) is connected with a Sanskrit root _vê_, meaning much the same thing; and we find this same root _vê_ appearing again in the Latin, _vimen_ a twig, and _vitis_, a vine, the last so named from its tendrils, which we should judge were used for platting before they were used for producing grapes. From the same root, again, and for the same reason, are derived the Latin _viburnum_, briony; the Slavonic _wetle_, willow; the Sanskrit _vetra_, reed. The Latin _scirpus_, reed, and the Greek γρῖφος, a net, are allied; but these may not be instances quite in point.
Such rude platting as this is a very different thing from the elaborately woven cloths found among the remains of the lake-villages, whose construction involves also the art of _spinning_.
P. 54. The view put forward in this chapter concerning the race of the neolithic men in Europe, is that which seems to the writer most consistent with _all_ the facts known, concerning the distribution of pre-historic man. As was said in the Preface, the students in different branches of pre-historic inquiry have not begun yet to collate sufficiently the results of their researches, and their opinions sometimes clash. We have to reconcile the pre-historic anthropologist and the ethnologist with the student of comparative philology. Most of the former are agreed that the earliest inhabitants of this quarter of the globe were most allied in character to the Lapps and Finns; and were consequently of what we have distinguished (Chapter V.) as the yellow-skinned family. But they are far from agreed that the bronze-using men were not of the same race; and some (Keller for instance) are violently opposed to the notion that the substitution of metal for stone was a sudden transition, and due to foreign importation. In some instances there is evidence that the change was gradual.