Now ‘mark,’ which, as we know, means a boundary or border-land, comes from a root which means ‘the chase,’ or ‘wild animals.’ So ‘mark’ originally meant the place of the chase, or where wild animals lived. This gives us some sort of picture of these early settlements, whose in-dwellers carried on their commerce with each other in such primitive fashion. They were little spots of cleared or cultivated land, surrounded by a sort of jungle or primeval forest inhabited only by wild beasts. It was in such wild places as these that the first markets used to be held. Here, under the spreading branches of the trees, at some spot agreed upon beforehand,--some open glade, perhaps, which would be chosen because a neighbouring stream afforded means of refreshment,--the fierce distrustful men would meet to take a passing glimpse at the blessings of peace. These wild border-lands which intervened also explain to us how it was that so great an isolation continued to be maintained between the different settlements. If their pasture-lands had abutted immediately on each other, if the herds of one tribe had grazed by the herds of another, there must have been much more intercommunion and mutual trust than appears to have existed.
The value of cattle does not consist only in the food and skins which they provide. Oxen have from a very early time been employed for purposes of agriculture; and we find among the names derived from cattle many suggesting that they must have been put to this use at the time when those names arose. Thus the Greeks spoke of the evening as βουλυτός (boulutos), or the time for the unyoking of oxen; and the same idea is expressed in the old German word for evening, ‘àbant’ (Abend), or the unyoking. This, then, is the next stage in social progress: when agriculture becomes the usual employment of man. With the advance of this stage begins the decay of the patriarchal life, which, as we shall see in the next chapter, gradually disappears and gives place to fresh social combinations. Though we have hitherto spoken only of the patriarchal life of the Aryans, it was a life even more characteristic of the Semitic race. They were essentially pastoral and nomadic in their habits, and they seem to have continued to lead a purely pastoral life much longer than the Aryans did. In the Old Testament we learn how Abraham and Lot had to separate because their flocks were too extensive to feed together; and how Abraham wandered about with his flocks and herds, his family and servants, dwellers in tents, leading a simple patriarchal life, much as do the Arabs of the present day. Long after the neighbouring people had settled in towns, these Semitic tribes continued to wander over the intervening plains, depending for food and clothing only on their sheep and cattle and camels.