Note 300 — Chapter IV

I am aware this is disputed by O. Peschel—Races of Man, 137 et seq.—but I think the evidence is sufficient; and it must be remembered that there is direct evidence of the most backward races not using the fire they possess for cooking, but always eating their animal food raw, as, for instance, the Semang people of the Malay Peninsula. (See Skeat and Blagden, Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, i. 112.) The Andaman Islanders could not make fire, though they possessed and kept it alive. This shows that they must have borrowed it and did not previously possess it.—Quatrefages, The Pygmies, 108. Tylor, Early History of Mankind, cap. ix., should be consulted.