Animal cults of the ancient people

What had been enacted in the clearing was not merely a dance but a rite of supreme importance. It wasn't a rehearsal or a training session for a hunt — it was, to their minds, a real hunt, perhaps even the "main" hunt.

Two men from the tribe, the fastest and the most agile, tied on horns and tails and represented  antelopes,  while  the  others hunted them. If a spear "felled" an antelope, then the hunt the next day augured to be successful. If the hunters failed, then the hunt was postponed, for it was doomed to failure.

The scientists did not even deign to look, so sure were they that the paintings in the cave were a forgery, because primitive men could not possibly have been able to draw, so much less print in colour.

There was also a magic cure which consisted in "driving" the illness out of man and into an animal—several hairs of a sick man were mixed into the feed of a pig or a dog, hoping that illness would be transmitted to them and the man would be cured.

Many peoples, living at great distances from each other, believed that birds had been the creators of all things. With some it was birds as a class, while others, like Polynesians for instance, had a special mythical bird Taaroa who laid an egg from which the world emerged.

The hunter walked over to the bear lying prostrate on the ground and sat down beside it. The hard and dangerous hunt was over, and, what was more, over were the strenuous preparations for it. For, before starting on a bear hunt, the Indians fasted for many days, and on the eve of the hunt offered sacrifices to the animals they had killed before.