The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State

and the cultivation of plants. Now, the eastern continent, the so-called Old World, possessed almost all animals suitable for taming and all cultivable grain varieties except one; the western, America, had only the llama of the tameable mammals, and this only in a part of the south, and of all cultivated grains only one, but the best: maize. These different natural conditions cause the population of each hemisphere to go its own way from now on, and the markers at the boundaries of the different stages are different in each of the two cases.

2. Middle stage.

Begins in the East with the taming of domestic animals, in the West with the cultivation of food plants by means of irrigation and the use of Adoben sun-dried bricks and stone for buildings.
We begin with the West, since here this stage was nowhere exceeded until the European conquest.
Among the Indians of the lower stage of Barbarism (to which all those found east of the Mississippi belonged), there already existed at the time of their discovery a certain garden cultivation of maize and perhaps also pumpkins, melons, and other garden plants, which provided a very essential component of their food; they lived in wooden houses in palisaded villages. The northwestern tribes, especially those in the region of the Columbia River, were still at the upper stage of savagery and knew neither pottery nor plant cultivation of any kind. The Indians of the so-called Pueblos in New Mexico, on the other hand, the Mexicans, Central Americans, and Peruvians at the time of the conquest, were at the middle stage of barbarism; they lived in fortress-like houses of adobe or stone, grew maize and other food plants—varying according to location and climate—in artificially irrigated gardens, which provided the main food source, and had even tamed some animals—the Mexicans the turkey and other birds, the Peruvians the llama. In addition, they knew the processing of metals—with