Four Ways of Being Human

The universe is filled with many wonders, but none is more marvelous than man. In Four Ways of Being Human, Gone Lisitzky considers four primitive tribes and reveals the fascinating, diversified ways of living built up by each one of them.

Here are the Semang of the tropical rain forest girdling the globe at the equator. A Negrito tribe of Malay and Siam, they live in caves or leaf shelters formed between branches and wear clothes made of bark—the men waistcloths, the women short petticoats. Many go naked. "The cheery little hunters," as the Semang have been called, have bamboo musical instruments, the jew's harp and a nose flute, and on festive occasions they dance and sing, having decorated themselves with leaves.

The bleak white world of the Polar Eskimos (so named in part because they lived farther north than any other people) forms a striking contrast with the green hothouse of the Semang. The winter home of these people was made usually of sandstone with a ceiling consisting of layers of skin with moss stuffed between, resting on rafters of long whalebone. Trousers, coats, stockings, underwear, boots, hoods—everything was of skin, fur, or feathers, and all clothing was custom-made to measure by the deft hand of the woman of the house. Although the hardships of their daily lives were great, the Polar Eskimos were filled with the joy of living they were undaunted by the threat of starvation and tragedy, but lived for a warm igloo aglow in the lamplight, abundant food, and friends and visitors with whom to share it.

Demonstrating primitive man's ability to make a home anywhere at all in the world simply by inventing a suitable way of being human, Mine Lisitzky continues her study with the Maoris of the far Pacific. Polynesians of New Zealand, the Maoris built long, single roomed houses from the tall pines of their islands and covered them with heavily thatched peaked roofs. Their basic wardrobe (for both men and women) contained a knee-length fringed kilt held up by a belt and a plaited mat or blanket draped over the shoulders to leave one arm free. Warfare was frequent in olden days, but in time of peace visits were made and neighboring tribes were invited to feasts at which top-spinning, dart throwing, wrestling, and posture dancing held the interest of the people.

"The Hopi Way," as the survivors still call it after a millennium, has persisted against the harshest of environments and the fiercest of human enemies, also against the most subtle and persuasive challenge of all—the influence of the all-conquering white man. Today, in the forbidding desert of northeastern Arizona, there are nine stone-built villages inhabited by "the Peaceful People." Some of the flat-topped houses (which are made of the same red sandstone as the mesa on which the town stands, or of the local adobe clay) are constructed on the roofs of others and are reached with ladders. Scarcely a month passes without its big public dance ceremony in the plaza. For all their seriousness of pur- pose (such as the bringing of rain), these dances are not considered grin duties. Each one is a village holiday; and although the Hopis have no Sunday, it has been calculated that they nevertheless manage to have more than two hundred holidays a year!

"Any acquaintance with anthropology," writes the author in her introduction, "is . . . bound to awaken a feeling of pride in the human race, in the inexhaustible fertility of its power to create cultures. With that comes tolerance. We may not care to adopt the customs of another culture for ourselves, but they are never again so likely to strike us as 'wrong' or 'ugly' or 'immoral.' We see that they were come by precisely as we came by ours, that it is only a matter of how one is brought up. What may possibly seem wrong is the act of needlessly imposing by force the customs of one culture on another."

—from the dust jacket