66 A Short History of The World Bril. Mus. NEOLITHICISM OF TO-DAY Spearheads, exactly as in the true Neolithic days, but made recently by Australian Natives. (1) Made from a telegraph insulator : (2) from a piece of broken bottle glass. Resurrection of Christ on the proper anniversaries but on dates that vary year by year with the phases of the moon. It may be doubted whether the first agriculturalists made any observation of the stars. It is more likely that stars were first observed by migratory herdsmen, who found them a convenient mark of direction. But once their use in determining seasons was realized, their importance to agriculture became very great. The seed-time sacrifice was linked up with the southing or northing of some prominent star. A myth and worship of that star was for primitive man an almost inevitable consequence. It is easy to see how important the man of knowledge and experience, the man who knew about the blood sacrifice and the stars, became in this early Neolithic world. The fear of uncleanness and pollution, and the methods of cleansing that were advisable, constituted another source of power for the knowledgeable men and women. For there have always been witches as well as wizards, and priestesses as well as priests. The early priest was really not so much a religious man as a man of apphed science. His science was generally empirical and often bad ; he kept it secret from the generality of men very jealously ; but that docs not alter the fact that his primary function was knowledge and that his primary use was a practical use. Twelve or fifteen thousand years ago, in all the warm and fairly well-watered parts of the Old World these Neolithic human communities, with their class and tradition of priests and priestesses and their cul-
