"Certain very fundamental things there may have been in men's minds long before the coming of speech. The mental life of the later Paleolithic man was close to our own, and like our own it was built on the foundations of that ancient more solitary, more animal, apelike ancestor. ...The great apes pair and rear their young. The young go in fear of the old male, and presently the young males rouse his jealousy and are killed or driven off. The females are the protected slaves of the old male. That is the general state of affairs with all slightly gregarious animals, and there is no reason to suppose that the sub-man differed in such respects.
"The fear of the Old Man was the beginning of social wisdom. The young of the primitive squatting-place grew up under that fear. Objects associated with him were probably forbidden. Everyone was forbidden to touch his spear or to sit in his place, just as today little boys must not touch father's pipe or sit in his chair. He was probably the master of all the women. The youths of the little community had to remember that. Their mothers taught them to remember that. Their mothers instilled into them dread and respect and consideration for the Old Man.
"The idea of something forbidden, the idea of things being, as it is called, tabu, not to be touched, not to be looked at, may thus have got well into the sub-human mind at a very early stage indeed. ...Only by respecting this primal law, could the young male hope to escape the Old Man's wrath.
"A disposition to propitiate the Old Man even after he was dead is also quite understandable. He must have been an actor in many a primordial nightmare. One was not sure that he was dead. He might only be asleep, or shamming. Long after an Old Man was dead, when there was nothing to represent him but a mound and a megalith, the women would continue to convey to their children how awful and wonderful he was. And being still a terror to his own little tribe, it was easy to go on to hoping that he would be a terror to other and hostile people. In his life he had fought for his tribe, even if he had bullied it. Why not when he was dead? One sees that the Old Man idea was an idea very natural to the primitive mind and capable of great developments. The fear of the Father passed by imperceptible degrees into the fear of the tribal God."
The Outline of History by H.G. Wells, pp. 102, 103
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