The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State

the exception of iron, for which reason they still could not dispense with stone weapons and stone tools. The Spanish conquest then cut off all further independent development.

In the East, the middle stage of barbarism began with the taming of milk- and meat-giving animals, while plant cultivation here seems to have remained unknown until deep into this period. The taming and breeding of livestock and the formation of larger herds seems to have given the occasion for the separation of the Aryans and Semites from the rest of the mass of barbarians. For the European and Asian Aryans, the names for livestock are still common, but those for cultivated plants are almost not at all.

Herd formation led in suitable places to pastoral life; among the Semites in the grasslands of the Euphrates and Tigris, among the Aryans in those of India, the Oxus and Jaxartes, the Don and Dnieper. The taming of livestock must have been carried out first on the borders of such pastures. To later generations, they thus appear as coming from regions which, far from being the cradle of the human race, were on the contrary almost uninhabitable for their wild ancestors and even for people of the lower stage of barbarism. Conversely, once these barbarians of the middle stage were accustomed to pastoral life, it could never have occurred to them to return voluntarily from the grass-bearing river plains to the forest regions in which their ancestors were native. Indeed, even when they were pushed further to the north and west, it was impossible for the Semites and Aryans to move into the West Asian and European forest regions before they were enabled, through grain cultivation, to feed their livestock on this less favorable soil and especially to overwinter them. It is more than probable that grain cultivation here arose first from the need for fodder for the livestock and only later became important for human food.

The abundant meat and milk diet among Aryans