ABSTRACT
In the history of the human race the domestication of animals has played a very important part in shaping social organization. Observers of animal life, such as herdsmen, would naturally draw their own conclusions sooner or later and reason out the connexion between the two. Among hunting peoples the tendency, already present, to emphasize the father's authority was probably strengthened by the fact that the care of the animals was the man's province. The Mongolian herdsmen live in small scattered family groups whose economic centre is the yurta, the felt tent; the possession of the herds is vested in the family unit as a whole. Horses, saddles, clothes, and arms, are the only kinds of individual property recognized. The strong personal sense of independence possessed by hunters is also found among herdsmen, as is also the dislike of any kind of subordination and of what we should call a settled government.
