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 3.4 Gross Electrical Activity of the Brain Is Readily Detected
The Cutting Edge ■ Optogenetics: Using Light to Probe Brain-Behavior Relationships
Visual Summary

4 The Chemistry of Behavior

Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
The Birth of a Pharmaceutical Problem Child
4.1 Synaptic Transmission Involves a Complex Electrochemical Process
4.2 Many Neurotransmitters Have Been Identified
4.3 Neurotransmitter Systems Form a Complex Array in the Brain
BOX 4.1 Pathways for Neurotransmitter Synthesis
4.4 The Effects of a Drug Depend on Its Site of Action and Dose
4.5 Drugs Affect Each Stage of Neural Conduction and Synaptic Transmission
4.6 Some Neuroactive Drugs Ease the Symptoms of Injury or Psychiatric Illness
4.7 Some Neuroactive Drugs Are Used to Alter Conscious Experiences
4.8 Substance Abuse and Addiction Are Worldwide Social Problems
The Cutting Edge ■ Uncovering the Insula
Visual Summary

5 Hormones and the Brain

Crafting a Personality through Hormones

5.1 Hormones Have Many Actions in the Body
5.2 Hormones Have a Variety of Cellular Actions
BOX 5.1 Techniques of Modern Behavioral Endocrinology
5.3 Each Endocrine Gland Secretes Specific Hormones
The Cutting Edge ■ Bones Secrete Hormones to Regulate Appetite
5.4 Hormones Regulate Social Behaviors and Vice Versa
Visual Summary

PART II Evolution and Development of the

Nervous System

6 Evolution of the Brain and Behavior

We Are Not So Different, Are We?

6.1 How Did the Enormous Variety of Species Arise on Earth?
6.2 Why Should We Study Other Species?
BOX 6.1 Why Should We Study Particular Species?
BOX 6.2 To Each Its Own Sensory World
6.3 All Vertebrate Brains Share the Same Basic Structures
6.4 The Evolution of Vertebrate Brains Reflects Changes in Behavior
6.5 Many Factors Led to the Rapid Evolution of a Large Cortex in Primates
BOX 6.3 Evolutionary Psychology
 6.6 Evolution Continues Today
The Cutting Edge ■ Are Humans Still Evolving?
Visual Summary

7 Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior

Overcoming Blindness
7.1 Neural Development Is Guided by the Interaction of Genetic and Environmental
Factors
7.2 Development of the Nervous System Can Be Divided into Six Distinct Stages
BOX 7.1 Transgenic and Knockout Mice
BOX 7.2 Degeneration and Regeneration of Nervous Tissue
7.3 Lifelong Synapse Rearrangement Is Guided by Experience
7.4 Experience Can Alter Gene Expression to Affect Brain Development
The Cutting Edge ■ Harnessing Glia to Reverse an Inherited Brain Disorder
7.5 The Brain Continues to Change as We Grow Older
Visual Summary

PART III Perception and Action

8 General Principles of Sensory Processing, Touch, and Pain

What’s Hot? What’s Not?

SENSORY PROCESSING
8.1 Sensory Receptor Organs Detect Energy or Substances
8.2 Sensory Information Processing Is Selective and Analytical
BOX 8.1 Synesthesia
TOUCH: MANY SENSATIONS BLENDED TOGETHER
8.3 Skin Is a Complex Organ That Contains a Variety of Sensory Receptors
PAIN: AN UNPLEASANT BUT ADAPTIVE EXPERIENCE
8.4 Human Pain Can Be Measured
The Cutting Edge ■ Evolving an Indifference to Toxins
8.5 Pain Can Be Difficult to Control
Visual Summary

9 Hearing, Balance, Taste, and Smell

No Ear for Music

HEARING
9.1 Pressure Waves in the Air Are Perceived as Sound
BOX 9.1 The Basics of Sound
9.2 Auditory Signals Run from Cochlea to Cortex
9.3 Pitch Information Is Encoded in Two Complementary Ways
9.4 Brainstem Auditory Systems Are Specialized for Localizing Sounds
9.5 The Auditory Cortex Processes Complex Sounds
9.6 Hearing Loss Is a Major Disorder of the Nervous System
VESTIBULAR PERCEPTION
9.7 An Inner Ear System Senses Gravity and Acceleration
THE CHEMICAL SENSES: TASTE AND SMELL
9.8 Chemicals in Foods Are Perceived as Tastes
The Cutting Edge ■ More Than a Matter of Taste
9.9 Chemicals in the Air Elicit Odor Sensations
Visual Summary

10 Vision
From Eye to Brain
When Seeing Isn’t Seeing
10.1 The Retina Transduces Light into Neuronal Activity
10.2 Properties of the Retina Shape Many Aspects of Our Vision
10.3 Neural Signals Travel from the Retina to Several Brain Regions
BOX 10.1 Eyes with Lenses Have Evolved in Several Phyla
10.4 Neurons at Different Levels of the Visual System Have Very Different Receptive
Fields
10.5 Color Vision Depends on Special Channels from the Retinal Cones through
Cortical Area V4
BOX 10.2 Most Mammalian Species Have Some Color Vision
10.6 The Many Cortical Visual Areas Are Organized into Two Major Streams
10.7 Visual Neuroscience Can Be Applied to Alleviate Some Visual Deficiencies
The Cutting Edge ■ Seeing the Light
Visual Summary

11 Motor Control and Plasticity

What You See Is What You Get

11.1 The Behavioral View Considers Reflexes versus Plans
11.2 Neuroscience Reveals Hierarchical Systems
11.3 The Spinal Cord Is a Crucial Link in Controlling Body Movement
11.4 Pathways from the Brain Control Different Aspects of Movements
BOX 11.1 Cortical Neurons Can Guide a Robotic Arm
11.5 Extrapyramidal Systems Also Modulate Motor Commands
The Cutting Edge ■ Cerebellar Glia Play a Role in Fine Motor Coordination
11.6 Brain Disorders Can Disrupt Movement
BOX 11.2 Prion-Like Neurodegeneration May Be at Work in Parkinson’s
Visual Summary

PART IV Regulation and Behavior

12 Sex
Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases
Genitals and Gender: What Makes Us Male and Female?
SEXUAL BEHAVIOR
12.1 Reproductive Behavior Can Be Divided into Four Stages
12.2 The Neural Circuitry of the Brain Regulates Reproductive Behavior
The Cutting Edge ■ Sexual Experience Solidifies Neural Circuits for Mating
12.3 The Hallmark of Human Sexual Behavior Is Diversity
12.4 For Many Vertebrates, Parental Care Determines Offspring Survival
SEXUAL DIFFERENTIATION
12.5 Sex Determination and Sexual Differentiation Occur Early in Development
12.6 Gonadal Hormones Direct Sexual Differentiation of the Brain and Behavior
BOX 12.1 The Paradoxical Sexual Differentiation of the Spotted Hyena
12.7 Do Fetal Hormones Masculinize Human Behaviors in Adulthood?
Visual Summary

13 Homeostasis
Active Regulation of the Internal Environment
Harsh Reality TV
13.1 Homeostasis Maintains a Consistent Internal Environment: The Example of
Thermoregulation
BOX 13.1 Physiological and Behavioral Thermoregulation Are Integrated
FLUID REGULATION
13.2 Water Shuttles between Two Body Compartments
13.3 Two Internal Cues Trigger Thirst
FOOD AND ENERGY REGULATION
13.4 Nutrient Regulation Helps Prepare for Future Needs
13.5 A Hypothalamic Appetite Controller Integrates Multiple Hunger Signals
The Cutting Edge ■ Friends with Benefits
13.6 Obesity and Eating Disorders Are Difficult to Treat
BOX 13.2 Body Fat Stores Are Tightly Regulated, Even after Surgical Removal of Fat
Visual Summary

14 Biological Rhythms, Sleep, and Dreaming

When Sleep Gets Out of Control

BIOLOGICAL RHYTHMS
14.1 Many Animals Show Daily Rhythms in Activity
14.2 The Hypothalamus Houses a Circadian Clock
SLEEPING AND WAKING
14.3 Human Sleep Exhibits Different Stages
14.4 Why and How Did Sleep Evolve?
BOX 14.1 Sleep Deprivation Can Be Fatal
14.5 At Least Four Interacting Neural Systems Underlie Sleep
The Cutting Edge ■ Can Individual Neurons Be “Sleepy”?
14.6 Sleep Disorders Can Be Serious, Even Life-Threatening
Visual Summary

PART V Emotions and Mental Disorders

15 Emotions, Aggression, and Stress

The Hazards of Fearlessness

15.1 Broad Theories of Emotion Emphasize Bodily Responses
BOX 15.1 Lie Detector?
15.2 Did a Core Set of Emotions Evolve in Humans and Other Animals?
15.3 Specialized Neural Mechanisms Mediate the Experience and Expression of
Emotions
The Cutting Edge ■ Synaptic Changes during Fear Conditioning
15.4 Neural Circuitry, Hormones, and Synaptic Transmitters Mediate Violence and
Aggression
15.5 Stress Activates Many Bodily Responses
Visual Summary

16 Psychopathology
Biological Basis of Behavioral Disorders
“The Voice”
16.1 Schizophrenia Is the Major Neurobiological Challenge in Psychiatry
BOX 16.1 Long-Term Effects of Antipsychotic Drugs
16.2 Depression Is the Most Prevalent Mood Disorder
The Cutting Edge ■ Can Our Genes Tell Us Which Drugs to Use?
BOX 16.2 The Season to Be Depressed?
16.3 Extreme Mood Cycles Define Bipolar Disorder
16.4 There Are Several Types of Anxiety Disorders
BOX 16.3 Tics, Twitches, and Snorts: The Unusual Character of Tourette's Syndrome
Visual Summary

PART VI Cognitive Neuroscience

17 Learning and Memory

Trapped in the Eternal Now

FUNCTIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON LEARNING AND MEMORY
17.1 There Are Several Kinds of Learning and Memory
17.2 Different Forms of Nondeclarative Memory Involve Different Brain Regions
17.3 Successive Processes Capture, Store, and Retrieve Information in the Brain
BOX 17.1 Emotions and Memory
NEURAL MECHANISMS OF MEMORY STORAGE
17.4 Memory Storage Requires Physical Changes in the Brain
17.5 Synaptic Plasticity Can Be Measured in Simple Hippocampal Circuits
The Cutting Edge ■ Artificial Activation of an Engram
17.6 In the Adult Brain, Newly Born Neurons May Aid Learning
Visual Summary
18 Attention and Higher Cognition

One Thing at a Time

ATTENTION
18.1 Attention Selects Stimuli for Processing
BOX 18.1 Reaction Time Responses, from Input to Output
18.2 Targets of Attention: Attention Alters the Functioning of Many Brain Regions
18.3 Sources of Attention: A Network of Brain Sites Creates and Directs Attention
CONSCIOUSNESS AND EXECUTIVE FUNCTION
18.4 Consciousness Is a Mysterious Product of the Brain
BOX 18.2 Phineas Gage
The Cutting Edge ■ Building a Better Mind Reader
Visual Summary

19 Language and Lateralization

Silencing the Inner Voice

BRAIN ASYMMETRY AND LATERALIZATION OF FUNCTION
19.1 The Left and Right Hemispheres Are Different
BOX 19.1 The Wada Test
19.2 Right-Hemisphere Damage Impairs Specific Types of Cognition
19.3 Left-Hemisphere Damage Can Cause Aphasia
19.4 Competing Models Describe the Left-Hemisphere Language System
VERBAL BEHAVIOR: SPEECH AND READING
19.5 Language Has Both Learned and Unlearned Components
BOX 19.2 Williams Syndrome Offers Clues about Language
BOX 19.3 Vocal Behavior in Birds and Other Species
19.6 Reading Skills Are Difficult to Acquire and Frequently Impaired
RECOVERY OF FUNCTION AFTER BRAIN DAMAGE
19.7 Stabilization and Reorganization Are Crucial for Recovery of Function
BOX 19.4 The Amazing Resilience of a Child’s Brain
The Cutting Edge ■ Contact Sports Can Be Costly
Visual Summary

Appendix

Glossary

References

Author Index

Subject Index
Preface

Twenty-four years ago, a new kind of textbook was published for University courses that were often called “Brain
and Behavior.” As the field evolved, the book’s title metamorphosed from Biological Psychology to Behavioral
Neuroscience, but the same drive to provide a definitive and comprehensive survey of the neurosciences lies at the
heart of all our efforts. We strive to keep the book up-to-date while keeping a conversational tone to make this
wealth of information not just accessible, but fascinating. The biggest change in this new edition is the development of
Learning Objectives for each segment of the book, with the idea that telegraphing what’s to come will focus
readers’ attention and facilitate learning. As you finish each section of text, it would be a good idea to go back and
read the associated Learning Objectives to see whether in fact you incorporated the material. If not, a quick review
of that text may be in order.
As always, there have been plenty of new findings to add to this edition. In fact, the problem we face is which of
the many, many new findings to leave out—those that are not quite essential for a survey of the field. We are pretty
picky about what we add, and still it seems like a deluge of new information and ideas. Hundreds of new papers are
cited in this edition. If that sounds like a lot, let us give you a perspective on how many new papers were omitted.
On our newsfeed site (www.biopsychology.com/news/), 1,299 new links were added in 2018 alone. Those are just
the findings that were important enough to get the attention of mass media reporters. As we note in Chapter 1, over
40,000 new articles indexed under “neuroscience” appeared that year in PubMed. It would take a thick tome just to
list the titles of the papers from 2018!
While being very, very selective in sampling this flood of findings, we have made substantial changes in every
chapter. For example, in Chapter 3 we have a new figure comparing “kiss and run” synapses with more traditional
models of synaptic transmission. Chapter 5 has new material about a hormone secreted from bone that acts on the
hypothalamus to reduce appetite. We totally reorganized Chapter 7 for a more streamlined approach and discuss the
growing doubts about whether amyloid deposits cause Alzheimer’s. Chapter 9 needed a new figure comparing
transduction in the five taste receptors. Chapter 13 talks about yet another factor affecting appetite, glucagon-like
peptide 1. Chapter 16 now discusses the logic of pharmacogenomics to treat depression, while Chapter 18 was
thoroughly reorganized and includes more about executive function. Honestly, we could go on like this for every
chapter. Clearly this is an exciting era in the neurosciences. As Lewis Carrol put it, “We must run as fast as we can
just to stay in place!”
We’ve also kept several very popular features from previous editions: The Cutting Edge appears in each
chapter, where we explore some of the most exciting examples of recent research, and each chapter ends with a
Visual Summary, where you can see graphic reminders as you review the principle findings that we just presented.
These Visual Summaries really shine online, where with just a click you can review figures, animations, and quizzes to
help integrate the material. We also continue to open each chapter with a gripping vignette, relating someone’s real-
life experiences that will be better understood as the content of the chapter unfolds, and we again replaced several of
these vignettes as more recent events bring to the surface many of the important issues in behavioral neuroscience.
Likewise we’ve retained the marginal glossary that makes it easy to find the definitions that unlock the material, as
well as two features to let you burrow in on a particular subject: the online supplements called A Step Further cited
throughout the text, and the Recommended Reading at the close of each chapter.
 You might think that approaching the quarter-century mark we’d be jaded about improving and revising our
presentations, but we still love it, perhaps because the dynamic and exciting pace of neuroscience research shows no
sign of abating soon. As always, we welcome all feedback, praise or criticism, cuts or additions, from our readers.
You can email us directly at behavneuro@gmail.com.

Acknowledgments
We continue to feel so lucky to work with the inestimable team at Sinauer Associates, now a part of Oxford
University Press, whose deep skills and generous guidance transform our hundreds of files, thousands of email
attachments and sometimes scrambled emails into yet another beautiful book. Again, we feel so grateful to benefit
from the experience and exquisite taste of others. In particular, the book could not exist without the contributions of
Senior Acquisition Editor Syd Carroll, Production Editor Alison Hornbeck, Production Manager Joan Gemme,
Book Designer and Production Specialist Annette Rapier, and Media and Supplements Editor Zan Carter and her
crew. We also fondly bid adieu to the recently retired Chris Small, Production Manager for all our previous editions.
We hope you’re enjoying yourself, Chris, but how could you abandon us!? A cadre of commandos delved deep in
the archives to deal with copyrights and permissions, so we salute you Michele Beckta, Mark Siddall, and Tracy
Marton. We’d also like to thank our copy editor Lou Doucette, and our longtime art studio, Dragonfly Media, who
bring amazing skill and commitment to make us look good.
We must also thank the founder of Sinauer Associates, Andy Sinauer, for his unwavering support over the years,
with a touch of sadness upon his retirement. We are so proud to be a part of Andy’s tremendous legacy, begun all
those years ago with From Neuron to Brain, creating gorgeous books that make even the most complex topics
accessible and enjoyable.
By this point in the evolution of the book, we have benefited from the wisdom and advice of hundreds of
colleagues who have generously served as reviewers of past editions. Although we don’t have the space to list them
all, we want to acknowledge that in many ways the book you are holding is the product of a whole community of
neuroscientists. In this, the Ninth Edition, the following colleagues have provided invaluable critique and commentary:

Susan Bachus, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Susan Barron, University of Kentucky
Christopher Beeman, Central Washington University
Jin Bo, Eastern Michigan University
David Brodbeck, Algoma University
Elizabeth Caldwell, University of New Hampshire
James Cherry, Boston University
Michael Cohen, Loyola University Chicago
Paul J. Currie, Reed College
Patrick Cushen, Murray State University
Deana Davalos, Colorado State University
Darragh P. Devine, University of Florida
Christopher W. Drapeau, Valparaiso University
Kelli A. Duncan, Vassar College
Raymond H. Dye, Jr., Loyola University Chicago
Taffeta Elliott, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
Alison A. Fedio, Argosy University, Northern Virginia
Sara B. Festini, University of Tampa
Cynthia Michelle Finley, College of Marin
Jonathan Franz, SUNY Empire State College
Koren Ganas, University of Illinois
Sophie George, Dixie State University
Aaron Godlaski, Centre College
Brian J. Hock, Austin Peay State University
Jennifer Ingemi, Northeastern University
Mary Ellen Kelly, Haverford College
Susan Kennedy, Denison University
Michael Kerchner, Washington College
Sarita Lagalwar, Skidmore College
Stephen Lippi, George Mason University
Mario L. Mata, California State University, Los Angeles
Alexandra Roach, University of South Carolina, Aiken
Russell Romeo, Barnard College of Columbia University
Timothy Roth, Franklin and Marshall College
Emma Sarro, Dominican College
Peter A. Serrano, Hunter College, City University of New York
Fredric Shaffer, Truman State University
KatieAnn Skogsberg, Centre College
Lucy J. Troup, University of the West of Scotland
Adriana Uruena-Agnes, St. Petersburg College
Jennifer Wilhelm, College of Charleston
Jan R. Wessel, University of Iowa
Susan Zup, University of Massachusetts Boston
Finally, we thank all those tireless colleagues trying to understand the neural basis of behavior, with techniques that
would have seemed like sorcery only a few years ago, and who share their hard-won findings with us all.

S. Marc Breedlove Neil V. Watson

Media and Supplements
to accompany Behavioral Neuroscience, Ninth Edition

For the Student

Companion Website (bn9e.com)
The Behavioral Neuroscience Companion Website contains a range of study and review resources to help students
master the material presented in each chapter of the textbook. Access to the site is included with each new copy of
the textbook (see inside front cover). The site includes the following resources:
Chapter Outlines that outline each chapter and link to relevant Study Questions
Brain Explorer that offers an interactive way to explore the brain anatomy discussed in each chapter
Activities that help the student review key structures and processes
Animations and Videos that illustrate many of the complex, dynamic concepts and processes of behavioral
neuroscience
Media Clips that highlight interesting topics in the chapters (NEW for this edition)
“A Step Further” essays that offer expanded coverage of selected topics
Visual Summaries that link to all the Activities, Animations, and Videos, forming a complete review of each
chapter
Study Questions that help the student master the full range of material in each chapter
Flashcards that review and reinforce the many new terms introduced in each chapter
Complete Glossary that provides quick access to definitions of all the important terminology in the textbook

BioPsychology NewsLink (bn9e.com/news)

This invaluable online resource helps students make connections between the science of behavioral neuroscience and
their daily lives and keeps them apprised of the latest developments in the field. The site includes links to thousands
of news stories, all organized both by keyword and by textbook chapter. The site is updated 3–4 times per week, so
it includes up-to-the-minute information. NewsLink updates are also available on Facebook
(facebook.com/behavioralneuroscience).

For the Instructor

Ancillary Resource Center (oup-arc.com)
The Ancillary Resource Center (ARC) provides instructors using Behavioral Neuroscience 9e with a wide variety
of resources to aid in course planning, lecture development, and student assessment. Content includes:
Figures & Tables: All the figures, photos, and tables from the textbook are provided as JPEGs, all optimized for
 use in presentations.
PowerPoint Presentations: Two PowerPoint presentations are provided for each chapter of the textbook:
Figures: All the chapter’s figures, photos, and tables, with titles and complete captions
Lectures: Complete lecture outlines, including selected figures
Instructor’s Manual: The Instructor’s Manual includes useful resources for planning your course, lectures, and
exams. For each chapter of the textbook, the IM includes a chapter overview, a chapter outline, the chapter’s key
concepts, additional references for course and lecture development, and a list of the chapter’s key terms.
Videos: A robust collection of video segments from the BBC and other sources bring to life many important
concepts discussed in the textbook. These videos can be used as excellent lecture-starters and/or discussion
topics.
Animations: These detailed animations from the Companion Website help enliven lectures and illustrate dynamic
processes.
Animation Quizzes: These quizzes test the student’s understanding of the topic (NEW for this edition).
Chapter Quizzes: Quiz questions for each chapter in two formats: Available in Blackboard, Canvas, D2L
platform, or as MS Word files.
Multiple choice tests student comprehension of the material covered in each chapter.
Essays challenge students to synthesize and apply what they have learned.
Test Bank: The Test Bank consists of a broad range of questions covering key facts and concepts in each chapter.
Multiple choice, essay, and paragraph development questions are included. Questions are ranked according to
Bloom’s Taxonomy and referenced to specific textbook sections. NEW for this edition, questions are also aligned
to the textbook Learning Objectives. (Available in Blackboard, Canvas, D2L platform, or as MS Word files.)

Interoperable Course Cartridge

At Oxford University Press, we create high quality, engaging, and affordable digital material in a variety of formats,
and deliver it to you in the way that best suits the needs of you, your students, and your institution. With
Interoperable Course Cartridge by Oxford University Press, there is no need for you and your students to learn a
separate publisher-provided courseware platform in order access quality digital learning tools within your Learning
Management System. Instructors and their LMS administrators simply download Oxford’s Interoperable Cartridge
from Oxford’s online Ancillary Resource Center (ARC), and with the turn of a digital key, incorporate engaging
content from OUP directly into their LMS for assigning and grading.

Value Options

eBook

(ISBN 978-1-60535-937-3)
Ideal for self-study, the Behavioral Neuroscience, Ninth Edition, enhanced eBook delivers the full suite of digital
resources in a format that is independent from any courseware or learning management system platform. The
enhanced eBook is available through leading higher education eBook vendors.

Looseleaf Textbook

(ISBN 978-1-60535-936-6)
Behavioral Neuroscience, Ninth Edition is also available in a three-hole-punched, looseleaf format. Students can
take just the sections they need to class and can easily integrate instructor material with the text.
Introduction
Scope and Outlook

Machine or Human?
In the near future depicted in the HBO series Westworld, people visit a theme park set in the Old West, with steam
locomotives, saloons, and brothels, populated with androids, called “hosts,” to entertain humans. The mechanical hosts
provide their guests with anything, from casual banter to gunfights, harmless flirting to kinky sex, the only restriction
being that the robots are never to harm the humans. The android hosts are so lifelike in appearance and behavior that
visitors may have a hard time distinguishing whether someone is a fellow guest or a robot. To make the androids’
simulation of humans complete, they are given backstories, false memories of a life before their appearance for each
new batch of guests. Importantly, none of the androids know that they are mechanical beings rather than humans. It’s
probably not much of a spoiler to say that several plot lines in the series hinge on androids slowly discovering their true
nature, moving from shock and shame that they are mere machines, to openly rebelling from the notion that they are to
be used, and abused, as mere playthings for the humans.
We aren’t told too much about how the android “brains” in Westworld work, because, of course, such technology
remains far outside our grasp, so the writers, reduced to mere speculation, remain rather vague. But apparently the
knowledge and personality for any particular android lies in a “control unit,” a golf-ball-size device that can be extracted
from the head of one host and implanted into the head of another, interchangeable body. Presumably, if we had enough
knowledge and surgical skill, we could remove your brain from your head and connect it up to the head of some other
body. Would you still be you? Even if we put your brain into a body of the opposite sex? Come to think of it, are you
entirely sure there is a brain in your head, and not one of those control units?

Our aim in this book is to help you learn what is known so far about how brains work, and about how much more
we have yet to learn. We will explore the many ways in which the structures and actions of the brain produce mind
and behavior. But that is only half of our task. We are also interested in the ways in which behavior and experience
modify the structures and actions of the brain. One of the most important lessons we want to convey is that
interactions between brain and behavior are reciprocal. The brain controls behavior and, in turn, behavior and
experience alter the brain.
We hope to give an interesting account of the main ideas and research in behavioral neuroscience, which is of
great popular as well as scientific interest. Most important, we try to communicate our own interest and excitement
about the mysteries of mind and body.

Brain Explorer
1.1 The Brain Is Full of Surprises
Le arning Obje ctive s
After reading this section, you should be able to:
1.1.1 Name the main type of cells found in the brain, and name the connections between them.
1.1.2 List the names of some of the many fields of study related to behavioral neuroscience.
1.1.3 Describe five different perspectives taken in understanding the biology of behavior.

I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.
—Emo Philips
(American comedian)
Of course we should always consider the source when evaluating an idea, but even so, the brain indeed seems like a
pretty wonderful organ. For one thing, brains produced the entire extent of human knowledge, everything we
understand about the universe, however limited that may be. Brains also produced every written description of that
hard-won knowledge (including this book you hold in your hands), as well as every work of visual art, from doodles
to the sweeping frescos on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Most of us have a hard time grasping the idea of a billion of anything, but your head contains an estimated 86
billion nerve cells, or neurons (from the Greek word for “nerve” or “cord”) (Herculano-Houzel, 2012). Each neuron
contacts many other cells at points called synapses, so there are trillions of those between your ears. A specialized
extension of neurons, called an axon, is microscopically slender, yet it may be several feet long. We’ll learn that
axons produce electrical impulses that travel hundreds of miles per hour. Figure 1.1 offers a list of just a few of the
things we will learn about the human brain in the course of this book. All this hardware isn’t just for show—it allows
you to take in all the information in that figure in less than a minute.

1.1 Your Brain by the Numbers The cerebral cortex is the outermost portion of the brain.

What is behavioral neuroscience?

No treaty or trade union agreement defines the boundaries of behavioral neuroscience. The first people to study the
relationships between brain and behavior regarded themselves as philosophers, and their findings contributed to the
births of biology and psychology. Those disciplines merged in the twentieth century to form biological psychology,
the field that relates behavior to bodily processes. With the modern explosion of neuroscience, the study of the
brain, this research has evolved to the point that behavioral neuroscience offers a more accurate description.
Whichever name is used, the main goal of this field is to understand the neuroscience underlying behavior and
experience.
Behavioral neuroscience is a field that includes many players who come from quite different backgrounds:
psychologists, biologists, physiologists, engineers, neurologists, psychiatrists, and many others. Thus, there are many
career opportunities, in both universities and private industry, for people with interests in this field (Hitt, 2007). Figure
1.2 maps the relations of behavioral neuroscience to these many other disciplines. Clearly, the behavioral
neuroscience umbrella opens very wide.
1.2 What’s in a Name? In this graphical representation of the relationships among behavioral neuroscience and other
scientific disciplines, fields toward the center of the map are closest to behavioral neuroscience in their history, outlook,
aims, and/or methods.

Five viewpoints explore the biology of behavior

In our effort to understand the neuroscience bases of behavior, we use several different perspectives. Because each
one yields information that complements the others, the combination of perspectives is especially powerful. We will
discuss five major perspectives:

1. Describing behavior
2. Observing the development of behavior and its biological characteristics over the life-span
3. Studying the biological mechanisms of behavior
4. Studying applications of behavioral neuroscience—for example, its application to dysfunctions of human behavior
5. Studying the evolution of behavior

These perspectives are discussed in the sections that follow, and Table 1.1 illustrates how each perspective can be
applied to three kinds of behavior.

TABLE 1.1 Five Research Perspectives Applied to Three Kinds of Behavior

Research perspective Sexual behavior
DESCRIPTION
Structural What are the main patterns of In what main ways does
reproductive behavior and
sex differences in
behavior?
Functional How do specialized patterns
of behavior contribute to
mating and to care of
young?
ONTOGENY (development) How do reproductive and
secondary sex
Language and
Learning and memory communication
How are the sounds of
behavior change as a speech patterned?
consequence of experience
—for example,
conditioning?
How do certain behaviors What behavior is involved in
lead to rewards or making statements or
avoidance of punishment? asking questions?
How do learning and memory What changes in the brain
change as we grow older? when a child learns to
 characteristics develop speak?
over the life-span?
MECHANISMS What neural circuits and What anatomical and What brain regions are
hormones are involved in chemical changes in the particularly involved in
reproductive behavior? brain hold memories? language?
APPLICATIONS Low doses of testosterone Gene therapy and behavioral Speech therapy, in
restore libido in some therapy improve memory in conjunction with
postmenopausal women. some senile patients. amphetamine treatment,
speeds language recovery
following stroke.
EVOLUTION How does mating depend on How do different species How did the human speech
hormones in different compare in kinds and speed apparatus evolve?
species? of learning?

Behavior can be described according to different criteria

Until we describe what we want to study, we cannot accomplish much. Depending on our goals, we may describe
behavior in terms of detailed acts or processes, or in terms of results or functions. An analytical description of arm
movements might record the successive positions of the limb or the contraction of different muscles. A functional
behavioral description, by contrast, would state whether the limb was being used in walking or running, texting or
sexting. To be useful for scientific study, a description must be precise and reveal the essential features of the
behavior, using accurately defined terms and units.

The body and behavior develop over the life-span

Ontogeny is the process by which an individual changes in the course of its lifetime—that is, grows up and grows
old. Observing the way in which a particular behavior changes during ontogeny may give us clues to its functions and
mechanisms. For example, we know that learning ability in monkeys increases over the first years of life. Therefore,
we can speculate that prolonged maturation of brain circuits is required for complex learning tasks. In rodents, the
ability to form long-term memories lags somewhat behind the maturation of learning ability. So, young rodents learn
well but forget more quickly than older ones, suggesting that learning and memory involve different processes.
Studying the development of reproductive capacity and of differences in behavior between the sexes, along with
changes in body structures and processes, throws light on body mechanisms underlying sexual behaviors.

Biological mechanisms underlie all behavior

To learn about the mechanisms of an individual’s behavior, we study how his or her present body works. To
understand the underlying mechanisms of behavior, we must regard the organism (with all due respect) as a
“machine,” made up of billions of neurons. We must ask, How is this thing constructed to be able to do all that?
These are sometimes described as proximate questions—questions about the physical interactions that control a
particular behavior. How cells in your eye respond differently to light of different wavelengths is a proximate
question. On the other hand, why color vision, once it arose, benefited our ancestors is an evolutionary question.
Our major aim in behavioral neuroscience is to examine body mechanisms that make particular behaviors
possible. In the case of learning and memory, for example, we would like to know the sequence of electrical and
biochemical processes that occur when we learn something and retrieve it from memory. What parts of the nervous
system are involved in that process? In the case of reproductive behavior, we also want to understand the neuronal
and hormonal processes that underlie mating behaviors.

Research can be translated to address human problems

Like other sciences, behavioral neuroscience is also dedicated to improving the human condition. Numerous human
diseases involve malfunctioning of the brain. Many of these are already being alleviated as a result of research in the
neurosciences, and the prospects for continuing advances are good. Attempts to apply knowledge also benefit basic
research. For example, the study of memory disorders in humans has pushed investigators to extend our knowledge
of the brain regions involved in different kinds of memory (see Chapter 17).

We compare species to learn how the brain and behavior have evolved
Nature is conservative. Once particular features of the body or behavior evolve, they may be maintained for millions
of years and may be seen in animals that otherwise appear very different. For example, the electrical messages used
by nerve cells (see Chapter 3) are essentially the same in a jellyfish, a cockroach, and a human being. Some of the
chemical compounds that transmit messages through the bloodstream (hormones) are also the same in diverse
animals (see Chapter 5). Species share these conserved characteristics because the features first arose in a shared
ancestor (Box 1.1 on the next page). But mere similarity of a feature between species does not guarantee that the
feature came from a common ancestral species. Similar solutions to a problem may have evolved independently in
different classes of animals.

BOX 1.1 We Are All Alike, and We Are All Different

 How do similarities and differences among people and animals fit into behavioral neuroscience? Each person is in some
ways like all other people, in some ways like some other people, and in some ways like no other person. As the figure
shows, we can extend this observation to the much broader range of animal life. Each person is in some ways like all
other animals (e.g., needing to ingest complex organic nutrients), in some ways like all other vertebrates (e.g., having a
spinal column), in some ways like all other mammals (e.g., nursing our young), and in some ways like all other
primates (e.g., having a hand with an opposable thumb and a relatively large, complex brain).
Whether knowledge gained about a process in another species applies to humans depends on whether we are like
that species in regard to that process. The fundamental research on the mechanisms of inheritance in the bacterium
Escherichia coli proved so widely applicable that some molecular biologists proclaimed, “What is true of E. coli is true
of the elephant.” To a remarkable extent, that statement is true, but there are also some important differences in the
genetic mechanisms of E. coli and mammals.
With respect to each biological property, researchers must determine how animals are identical and how they are
different. When we seek animal models for studying human behavior or biological processes, we must ask the
following question: Does the proposed animal model really have some things in common with the process at work in
humans (Seok et al., 2013)? We will see many cases in which it does.
Even within the same species, however, individuals differ from one another: cat from cat, blue jay from blue jay, and
person from person. Behavioral neuroscience seeks to understand individual differences as well as similarities.
Therefore, the way in which each person is able to process information and store the memories of these experiences is
another part of our story.

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection is central to all modern biology. From this
perspective emerge two rather different emphases: (1) the continuity of behavior and biological processes among
species that reflects shared ancestry and (2) the species-specific differences in behavior and biology that have
evolved as adaptations to different environments.

Study Questions
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1.2 Three Approaches Relate Brain and Behavior
Le arning Obje ctive s
After reading this section, you should be able to:
1.2.1 Differentiate between the independent and dependent variables in scientific experiments.
1.2.2 Name the type of research in which a part of the brain is manipulated to observe effects on behavior, and
offer examples.
1.2.3 Name the type of research in which behavior or experience is manipulated to observe effects on the brain,
and offer examples.
1.2.4 Describe correlational research about the brain and behavior, and offer examples.
1.2.5 Explain why the brain must be capable of changing its structure, and name the term to describe that
changeability.

Behavioral neuroscientists use three approaches to understand the relationship between brain and behavior: somatic
intervention, behavioral intervention, and correlation. In the most common approach, somatic intervention (Figure
1.3A), we alter a structure or function of the brain or body to see how this alteration changes behavior. Here,
somatic intervention is the independent variable, and the behavioral effect is the dependent variable; that is, the
resulting behavior depends on how the brain has been altered. For example, in response to mild electrical stimulation
of one part of her brain, not only did one patient laugh, but she found whatever she happened to be looking at
amusing (Fried et al., 1998).

1.3 Three Main Approaches to Studying the Neuroscience of Behavior (A) In somatic intervention, investigators
change the body structure or chemistry of an animal in some way and observe and measure any resulting behavioral
effects. (B) Conversely, in behavioral intervention, researchers change an animal’s behavior or its environment and try to
ascertain whether the change results in physiological or anatomical changes. (C) Measurements of both kinds of variables
allow researchers to arrive at correlations between somatic changes and behavioral changes. (D) Each approach enriches
and informs the others.

In later chapters we describe many kinds of somatic intervention with both humans and other animals, as in the
following examples:
A hormone is administered to some animals but not to others; various behaviors of the two groups are later
compared.
A part of the brain is stimulated electrically, or by use of light to stimulate only a particular class of neurons, and
behavioral effects are observed.
A connection between two parts of the nervous system is cut, and changes in behavior are measured.
The approach opposite to somatic intervention is psychological or behavioral intervention (Figure 1.3B). In this
approach, the scientist intervenes in the behavior or experience of an organism and looks for resulting changes in
body structure or function. Here, behavior is the independent variable, and change in the body is the dependent
variable. Among the examples that we will consider in later chapters are the following:
Putting two adults of opposite sex together may lead to increased secretion of certain hormones.
Exposing a person or animal to a visual stimulus provokes changes in electrical activity and blood flow in parts of
the brain.
Training of animals in a maze is accompanied by electrical, biochemical, and anatomical changes in parts of their
brains.
The third approach to brain-behavior relations, correlation (Figure 1.3C), consists of finding the extent to which
a given body measure varies with a given behavioral measure. Later we will examine the following questions, among
others:
Are people with large brains more intelligent than people with smaller brains (a topic we’ll take up later in this
chapter)?
Are individual differences in sexual behavior correlated with levels of certain hormones in the individuals?
Is the severity of schizophrenia correlated with the magnitude of changes in brain structure?
Such correlations should not be taken as proof of causal relationship. For one thing, even if a causal relation
exists, the correlation does not reveal its direction—that is, which variable is independent and which is dependent.
For another, two factors might be correlated only because a third, unknown factor affects the two factors measured.
If you and your study partner get similar scores on an exam, that’s not because your performance caused her to get
the score she did, or vice versa. What a correlation does suggest is that the two variables are linked in some way—
directly or indirectly. Such a correlation often stimulates investigators to formulate hypotheses and to test them by
somatic or behavioral intervention. Only by moving on to such intervention approaches can we establish whether one
variable is causing changes in the other.
Combining these three approaches yields the circle diagram of Figure 1.3D, incorporating the basic approaches to
studying relationships between bodily processes and behavior. It also emphasizes the theme that the relations
between brain and behavior are reciprocal: each affects the other in an ongoing cycle of bodily and behavioral
interactions. We will see examples of this reciprocal relationship throughout the book.

Neuroplasticity: behavior can change the brain

The idea that there is a reciprocal relationship between brain and behavior has embedded within it a concept that is,
for most people, startling. When we say that behavior and experience affect the brain, we mean that they, literally,
physically alter the brain. The brain of a child growing up in a French-speaking household assembles itself into a
configuration different from that of the brain of a child who hears only English. That’s why the first child, as an adult,
understands French effortlessly while the second does not. In this case we cannot tell you what the structural
differences are exactly, but we do know one part of the brain that is being altered by these different experiences (see
Chapter 19).
Numerous examples, almost all in animal subjects, show that experience can affect the number or size of neurons,
or the number or size of connections between neurons. This ability of the brain, both in development and in
adulthood, to be changed by the environment and by experience is called neuroplasticity (or neural plasticity, or
simply plasticity).
Today when we hear the word plastic, we think of the class of materials found in so many modern products. But
originally, plastic meant “flexible, malleable” (from the Greek plassein, “to mold or form”), and the modern materials
were named plastics because they can be molded into nearly any shape. In 1890, William James (1842–1910)
described plasticity as the possession of a structure weak enough to yield to an influence but strong enough not to
yield all at once.
In the ensuing years, research has shown that the brain is even more plastic, more yielding, than James suspected.
For example, parts of neurons known as dendritic spines (see Chapter 2) appear to be in constant motion, changing
shape in the course of seconds. We will see many examples in which experience alters the structure and/or function
of the brain: In Chapter 5, you’ll read that hearing a baby cry causes the mother’s brain to secrete a hormone. In
Chapter 7, we’ll see that visual experience in kittens directs the formation of connections in the brain. In Chapter 12,
we’ll discuss how a mother rat’s grooming of her pups affects the survival of spinal cord neurons. And Chapter 17
talks about how a sea slug learning a task changes the connections between two particular neurons.

Media Clip 1.1: Neuroplasticity

Behavioral neuroscience and social psychology are related

The plasticity of the human brain has a remarkable consequence: other individuals can affect the physical structure of
your brain! Indeed, the whole point of coming to a lecture hall is to have the instructor use words and figures to alter
your brain so that you can retrieve that information in the future (in other words, teach you something). Many of
these alterations in your brain last only until you take an exam, but every once in a while the instructor may tell you
something that you’ll remember for the rest of your life. Most aspects of our social behavior are learned—from the
language we speak to the clothes we wear and the kinds of food we eat—so the mechanisms of learning and
memory (see Chapter 17) are important for understanding social behavior.
For an example from an animal model, consider the fact that rats spend a lot of time investigating the smells
around them, including those coming from other rats. Cooke et al. (2000) took young male rats, just weaned from
their mother, and raised them in two different ways: either alone in separate cages, or with other males in group cages
so they could engage in play (including a lot of sniffing of each other’s butts). Examination of these animals as adults
found only one brain difference between the groups: a region of the brain known to process odors was smaller in the
isolated males than in the males raised with playmates (Figure 1.4). Was it the lack of play (N. S. Gordon et al.,
2003), the lack of odors to investigate, or the stress of isolation that made the region smaller? Whatever the
mechanism, social experience affects this brain structure. In Chapter 17 we’ll see more examples of social
experience altering the brain.

1.4 The Role of Play in Brain Development A brain region involved in processing odors (the posterodorsal portion of
the medial amygdala) was smaller in male rats housed individually than in males housed together and allowed to play. Other
nearby regions were identical in the two groups. (After B. M. Cooke et al., 2000. Behav Brain Res 117: 107–113.)

Here’s an example of how social influences can affect human brain function. When people were asked to put a
hand into moderately hot water (47°C), part of the brain became active, presumably because of the discomfort
involved (Rainville et al., 1997). But people who were led to believe the water would be very hot had a more
activated brain than did those led to believe the discomfort would be minimal (Figure 1.5), even though the water
was the same temperature for everyone. The socially induced psychological expectation affected the magnitude of
the brain response, even though the physical stimulus was exactly the same. (By the way, the people with the more
activated brains also reported feeling more pain.)

1.5 Pictures of Pain People told to expect only mild discomfort from putting a hand into 47°C water (left) showed less
activation in a particular brain region (the anterior cingulate cortex) than did people expecting more discomfort (right) from
water of the very same temperature. Areas of high activation are indicated by orange, red, and white.

In most cases, biological and social factors continually interact and affect each other in an ongoing series of events
as behavior unfolds. For example, the level of the hormone testosterone in circulation can affect dominance behavior
and aggression (see Chapter 15). The dominance may be exhibited in a great variety of social settings, ranging from
playing chess to physical aggression. In humans and other primates, the level of testosterone correlates positively
with the degree of dominance and with the amount of aggression exhibited. Winning a contest, whether a game of
chess or a boxing match, raises the level of testosterone; losing a contest lowers the level. Thus, at any moment the
level of testosterone is determined, in part, by recent dominant-submissive social experience, and the level of
testosterone determines, in part, the degree of dominance and aggression in the future. Of course, social and cultural
factors also help determine the frequency of aggression; cross-cultural differences in rates of aggression exist that
cannot be correlated with hormone levels, and ways of expressing aggression and dominance are influenced by
sociocultural factors.
 Perhaps nothing distinguishes neuroscience from the other sciences more clearly than this fascination with
neuroplasticity and the role of experience. Neuroscientists have a pervasive interest in how experience physically
alters the brain and therefore affects future behavior. We will touch on this theme in every chapter of this book.

Study Questions
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1.3 Behavioral Neuroscientists Use Several Levels of Analysis
Le arning Obje ctive s
After reading this section, you should be able to:
1.3.1 Name and describe the scientific approach of explaining mechanisms at simpler and simpler levels.
1.3.2 Give a survey of important ongoing questions about the relationship between the brain and behavior.
1.3.3 Offer estimates of the extent of neurological and psychiatric disorders.
1.3.4 Explain the importance of research with animals for neuroscience, and discuss the ethics of such research.

Scientific explanations of systems or structures or functions usually involve breaking them down into smaller parts, as
a way of understanding them. This approach is known as reductionism. In principle, it is possible to reduce each
explanatory series down to the molecular or atomic level, though for practical reasons this extent of reductionism is
rare. For example, most chemists deal with large, complex molecules and the laws that govern them; seldom do they
seek explanations in terms of subatomic quarks and bosons.
Understanding behavior often requires several levels of biological analysis. The units of each level of analysis are
simpler in structure and organization than those of the level above. The levels of analysis range from social
interactions to the brain, continuing to successively less complex units until we arrive at single nerve cells and their
even simpler, molecular constituents.
Naturally, in all fields different problems are carried to different levels of analysis, and fruitful work is often being
done simultaneously by different workers at several levels (Figure 1.6). Thus, in their research on visual perception,
cognitive neuroscientists advance analytical descriptions of behavior. They try to determine how the eyes move while
looking at a visual pattern, or how the contrast among parts of the pattern determines its visibility. Meanwhile, other
behavioral neuroscientists study the differences in visual abilities among species and try to determine the adaptive
significance of these differences. For example, how is the presence (or absence) of color vision related to the life of a
species? At the same time, other investigators trace out brain structures and networks involved in different kinds of
visual discrimination. Still other scientists try to ascertain the electrical and chemical events that occur in the brain
during vision.

1.6 Levels of Analysis in Behavioral Neuroscience The scope of behavioral neuroscience ranges from the level of the
individual interacting with others, to the level of the molecule. Depending on the question at hand, investigators use
different techniques to focus on these many levels, but always with an eye toward how their findings apply to behavior.

We will encounter many diverse brain and behavior topics

Here are some examples of research topics considered in this book:
How does the brain grow, maintain, and repair itself over the life-span (see Chapter 7), and how are these
capacities related to the growth and development of the mind and behavior from the womb to the tomb?
How does the nervous system capture, process, and represent information about the environment? For example,
sometimes brain damage causes a person to lose the ability to identify other people’s faces (see Chapter 18);
what does that tell us about how the brain recognizes faces?
How does sexual orientation develop? Some brain regions are different in straight versus gay men (see Figure
12.26); what, if anything, do those differences tell us about the development of human sexual orientation?
Some people suffer damage to the brain and afterward seem alarmingly unafraid in dangerous situations and
unable to judge the fearfulness of other people; what parts of the brain are damaged to cause such changes (see
 Figure 15.16)?
How does the brain manage to change during learning (see Chapter 17), and how are memories retrieved?
What brain sites and activities underlie feelings and emotional expression? Are particular parts of the brain active
in romantic love, for example (Figure 1.7A)?
Why are different brain regions active during different language tasks (Figure 1.7B)?

1.7 “Tell Me Where Is Fancy Bred, Or in the Heart Or in the Head?” (A) The parts of the brain highlighted here
become especially active when a person thinks about his or her romantic partner. (B) Different brain regions are activated
when people perform four different language tasks. The techniques used to generate such images are described in Chapter
2.

The relationship between the brain and behavior is, on the one hand, very mysterious because it is difficult to
understand how a physical device, the brain, could be responsible for our subjective experiences of fear, love, and
awe. Yet despite this mystery, we all use our brains every day. Perhaps it is the “everyday miracle” aspect of the
topic that has generated so much folk wisdom about the brain. Think of it as “neuromythology.”
Sometimes these popular ideas about the brain are in line with our current knowledge, but in many cases we know
they are false. For example, the notion that we normally use only 10% of our brain is commonplace—a survey of
teachers found that nearly half of them agreed with this notion (Howard-Jones, 2014)—but it is patent nonsense.
Brain scans make it clear that the entire brain is activated by even fairly mundane tasks. Indeed, although the areas of
activation shown in Figure 1.7 appear rather small and discrete, we will show in Box 2.3 that experimenters must
work very hard to create images that separate activation related to a particular task from the background of
widespread, ongoing brain activity.
We offer a list of other commonly held beliefs about the brain and behavior on the website in A STEP FURTHER
1.1 : NEUROMYTHOLOGY: FACTS OR FABLES? Throughout the book we offer such opportunities for you to
explore a given topic in more detail on the website, bn9e.com.

Behavioral neuroscience contributes to our understanding of human disorders

One of the great promises of neuroscience is that it can help us understand brain disorders and devise treatment
strategies. Like any other complex mechanism, the brain is subject to a variety of malfunctions and breakdowns.
People afflicted by disorders of the brain are not an exotic few—a European survey estimated that at least 38% of
the population would suffer from a mental disorder at some point in a typical year (Wittchen et al., 2011). At least
one person in five around the world currently has neurological and/or psychiatric disorders that vary in severity from
mild challenges to complete disability. Figure 1.8A shows the estimated numbers of U.S. residents afflicted by some
of the main neurological disorders. Figure 1.8B gives estimates of the numbers of adults worldwide with certain
psychiatric disorders. The percentage of U.S. adults suffering from mental illness may be increasing (Twenge, 2015;
Twenge et al., 2010).

1.8 The Toll of Brain Disorders Estimated numbers of people in the United States with neurological disorders (A) and
number of people worldwide with psychiatric disorders (B). (Part A after C. L. Gooch et al., 2017. Ann Neurol 81: 479–
484; B after H. Ritchie and M. Roser, 2019. "Mental Health". Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from:
https://ourworldindata.org/mental-health. Underlying data available from http://ghdx.healthdata.org/gbd-results-tool.)
 The toll of these disorders is enormous, in terms of both individual suffering and social costs (Demyttenaere et al.,
2004). The National Advisory Mental Health Council has estimated that direct and indirect costs of behavioral and
brain disorders amount to $400 billion a year in the United States alone. For example, the cost for treatment of
dementia (severely disordered thinking) exceeds the costs of treating cancer and heart disease combined. The World
Health Organization (2004) estimates that over 15% of all disease burden, in terms of lost productivity, is due to
mental disorders. The high cost in suffering and expense has compelled researchers to try to understand the
mechanisms involved in these disorders and to try to alleviate or even prevent them.
In this quest, the distinction between clinical and laboratory approaches begins to fade away. For example, when
clinicians encounter a pair of twins, one of whom has schizophrenia while the other seems healthy, the discovery of
structural differences in their brains (Figure 1.9) immediately raises questions for laboratory scientists: Did the
structural differences arise before the symptoms of schizophrenia, or the other way around? Were the brain
differences present at birth, or did they arise during puberty? Does medication that reduces symptoms affect brain
structure? When genes associated with schizophrenia in people are introduced into mice, will that change the mouse
brains (see Figure 16.7)? This last question is just one instance of when working with animals is essential, an issue we
address next.

1.9 Identical Twins but Nonidentical Brains and Behavior In these images of the brains of identical twins, the fluid-
filled cerebral ventricles are prominent as dark “butterfly” shapes. The brain of the twin with schizophrenia (A) has the
enlarged cerebral ventricles that some researchers believe are characteristic of this disorder. The other twin does not have
schizophrenia; his brain (B) clearly has smaller ventricles.

Animal research makes vital contributions

Because we will draw on animal research throughout this book, we want to comment on some of the ethical issues of
experimentation on animals. Human beings’ involvement and concern with other species predates recorded history.
Early humans had to study animal behavior and physiology in order to escape some species and hunt others. To
study biological bases of behavior inevitably requires research on animals of other species as well as on human
beings. Psychology students usually underestimate the contributions of animal research because the most widely used
introductory psychology textbooks often present major findings from animal research as if they were obtained with
human participants (Domjan and Purdy, 1995).
Because of the importance of carefully regulated animal research for both human and animal health and well-being,
the National Research Council (NRC Committee on Animals as Monitors of Environmental Hazards, 1991)
undertook a study on the many uses of animals in research. The study noted that 93% of the mammals used in
research are laboratory-reared rodents. It also reported that most Americans believe that animal research should
continue. Of course, researchers have an obligation to minimize the discomfort of their animal subjects, and ironically
enough, animal research has provided us with the drugs and techniques to make most research painless for the
animal subjects (Sunstein and Nussbaum, 2004).
Nevertheless, a very active minority of people believe that research with animals, even if it does lead to lasting
benefits, is unethical. For example, in his 1975 book Animal Liberation, Peter Singer asserts that research with
animals can be justified only if it actually produces benefits. The trick, of course, is how to predict which experiment
will lead to a breakthrough. Thus Singer refuses to say that animal experimentation is never justified (Neale, 2006).
In the meantime, animal rights groups have vandalized labs, burned down buildings, and exploded bombs in
laboratories (Conn and Parker, 2008). In 2008, animal rights extremists set off firebombs at the homes of two
scientists in Santa Cruz, California. One scientist’s family, including two young children, had to flee their home
through a second-story window (Figure 1.10) (Paddock and La Ganga, 2008). These personal attacks on
individuals appear to be intended to intimidate and frighten scientists (D. Grimm, 2014), and they have already
hounded at least one researcher out of the field (Nature Neuroscience, 2015).

1.10 Car Firebombed by Animal Rights Activists The extremists targeted the cars and homes of two scientists who
work with animals at the University of California in Santa Cruz in 2008. The next year, the car of a researcher at UCLA
was torched.

Perhaps in a future where robots can be made that look and act like humans, methods will be available to clearly
see all the processes at work in a living, working human brain. In the meantime, there’s no substitute for research
with animal subjects. Every chapter in this book is teeming with information that was gathered from humane
experiments with animals.

Study Questions
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1.4 The History of Research on the Brain and Behavior Begins in Antiquity
Le arning Obje ctive s
After reading this section, you should be able to:
1.4.1 Trace the historical point at which the brain was recognized as the control unit for behavior.
1.4.2 Discuss the importance of the Renaissance in better understanding human anatomy.
1.4.3 Explain Descartes’s contribution to early neuroscience and his now-discredited ideas of dualism.
1.4.4 Trace the history of phrenology and the relationship to modern thinking about brain and behavior.
1.4.5 Discuss the difficult question of consciousness and the explosion of neuroscience research.

Only recently have scientists recognized the central role of the brain in controlling behavior. When Egyptian pharaoh
Tutankhamen was mummified (about 1300 BCE ), five important organs were preserved in his tomb: liver, lungs,
stomach, intestines, and heart. All these organs were considered necessary to ensure the pharaoh’s continued
existence in the afterlife. The brain, however, was picked out through the nostrils (Figure 1.11) and thrown away.
Although the Egyptian version of the afterlife entailed considerable struggle, the brain was not considered an asset.

1.11 Brain Removal Kit Ancient Egyptians had little regard for the brain. During mummification, they would use tools
like these to reach through the nostrils to pick out brain pieces and throw them away.

Neither the Hebrew Bible (written from the twelfth to the second century BCE ) nor the New Testament ever
mentions the brain. However, the Bible mentions the heart hundreds of times and makes several references each to
the liver, the stomach, and the bowels as the seats of passion, courage, and pity, respectively. “Teach us … that we
may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalms 90:12).
The heart is also where Aristotle (about 350 BCE ), the most prominent scientist of ancient Greece, located mental
capacities. We still reflect this ancient notion when we call people kindhearted, openhearted, fainthearted,
hardhearted, or heartless and when we speak of learning by heart. Aristotle considered the brain to be only a
cooling unit to lower the temperature of the hot blood from the heart.
Also about 350 BCE , the Greek physician Herophilus (the “Father of Anatomy”) advanced our knowledge of the
nervous system by dissecting bodies of both people and animals. He traced nerves from muscles and skin into the
spinal cord and noted that each region of the body is connected to separate nerves.
A second-century Greco-Roman physician, Galen, treated the injuries of gladiators. His reports of behavioral
changes caused by injuries to the heads of gladiators drew attention to the brain as the controller of behavior. Galen
advanced the idea that animal spirits—a mysterious fluid—passed along nerves to all regions of the body. But
Galen’s ideas about the anatomy of the human brain were very inaccurate because dissecting humans was illegal in
Rome at that time.
Renaissance scientists began to understand brain anatomy
The eminent Renaissance painter and scientist Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) studied the workings of the human
body and laid the foundations of anatomical drawing. He especially pioneered in providing views from different
angles and cross-sectional representations. His artistic renditions of the body included portraits of the nerves in the
arm and the fluid-filled ventricles in the brain (Figure 1.12).

1.12 Leonardo da Vinci’s Changing View of the Brain (A) In an early representation, Leonardo simply copied old
schematic drawings that represented the fluid-filled cerebral ventricles as a linear series of chambers. (B) Later he made a
drawing based on direct observation: after making a cast of the ventricles of an ox brain by pouring melted wax into the
brain and letting it set, he cut away the tissue to reveal the true shape of the ventricles.

Renaissance anatomists emphasized the shape and appearance of the external surfaces of the brain because these
were the parts that were easiest to see when the skull was removed. It was immediately apparent to anyone who
looked that the brain has an extraordinarily complex shape. To Renaissance artists like Michelangelo (1475–1564),
this marvelous structure was God’s greatest gift to humankind. So, in Michelangelo’s painting on the ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel, God seems to ride the form of the human brain when bestowing life to Adam (Meshberger, 1990),
while in another scene God’s throat resembles the base of the brain (Suk and Tamargo, 2010).
In 1633, René Descartes (1596–1650) wrote an influential book (De Homine [On Man]) in which he tried to
explain how the behavior of animals, and to some extent the behavior of humans, could be like the workings of a
machine. Descartes proposed the concept of spinal reflexes and a neural pathway for them (Figure 1.13).
Attempting to relate the mind to the body, Descartes suggested that the two come into contact in the pineal gland,
located within the brain. He suggested the pineal gland for this role because (1) whereas most brain structures are
double, located symmetrically in the two hemispheres, the pineal gland is single, like consciousness, and (2) he
believed, erroneously, that the pineal gland exists only in humans and not in animals.

1.13 An Early Account of Reflexes In this depiction of an explanation by Descartes, when a person’s toe touches fire,
the heat causes nervous activity to flow up the nerve to the brain (blue arrows). From there the nervous activity is
“reflected” back down to the leg muscles (red arrows), which contract, pulling the foot away from the fire; the idea of
activity being reflected back is what gave rise to the word reflex. In Descartes’s time, the difference between sensory and
motor nerves had not yet been discovered, nor was it known that nerve fibers normally conduct in only one direction.
Nevertheless, Descartes promoted thinking about bodily processes in scientific terms, and this focus led to steadily more
accurate knowledge and concepts.
 As Descartes was preparing to publish his book, he learned that the Catholic Church had forced Galileo to
renounce his teaching that Earth revolves around the sun, threatening to execute him if he did not recant. Fearful that
his own speculations about mind and body could also incur the wrath of the church, Descartes withheld his book
from publication. It did not appear in print until 1662, after his death. Descartes believed that if people were nothing
more than intricate machines, they could have about as much free will as a pocket watch, with no opportunity to
make the moral choices that were so important to the church. He asserted that humans, at least, had a nonmaterial
soul as well as a material body. This notion of dualism spread widely and left other philosophers with the task of
determining how a nonmaterial soul could exert influence over a material body and brain. Mainstream neuroscientists
reject dualism and insist that all the workings of the mind can also, in theory, be understood as purely physical
processes in the material world, specifically in the brain.

The concept of localization of function arose in the nineteenth century

By the end of the 1600s, the English physician Thomas Willis (1621–1675), with his detailed descriptions of the
structure of the human brain and his systematic study of brain disorders, convinced educated people in the Western
world that the brain is the organ that coordinates and controls behavior (Zimmer, 2004). A popular notion of the
nineteenth century, called phrenology, elaborated on this idea by asserting that the cerebral cortex consisted of
separate functional areas and that each area was responsible for a behavioral faculty such as love of family,
perception of color, or curiosity. Investigators assigned functions to brain regions anecdotally, by observing the
behavior of individuals and inferring, from the shape of the skull, which underlying regions of the brain were more or
less developed (Figure 1.14A).
Opponents rejected the entire concept of localization of brain function, insisting that the brain, like the mind,
functions as a whole. Today we know that the whole brain is indeed active when we are doing almost any task.
When we are performing particular tasks, however (as we saw earlier in this chapter), certain brain regions become
even more activated. Different tasks activate different brain regions. Modern brain maps of these places where
peaks of activation occur (Figure 1.14B) bear a passing resemblance to their phrenological predecessors, differing
only in the specific locations of functions. But unlike the phrenologists, we confirm these modern maps by other
methods, such as examining what happens after brain damage.

1.14 Old and New Phrenology (A) In the early nineteenth century, certain “faculties,” such as skill at mathematics or a
tendency toward aggression, were believed to be directly associated with particular brain regions. Phrenologists used
diagrams like this one to measure bumps on the skull, which they took as an indication of how fully developed each brain
region was in an individual, and hence how fully that person should display particular qualities. (B) Today, technology
enables us to roughly gauge how active different parts of the brain are when a person is performing various tasks (see
Chapter 2). But virtually the entire brain is active during any task, so the localization of function that such studies provide is
really a measure of where peak activity occurs, rather than a suggestion of a single region involved in a particular task. (B
after M. J. Nichols and W. T. Newsome, 1999. Nature 402: C35–C38.)
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 DANCE ON STILTS AT THE GIRLS’ UNYAGO, NIUCHI

Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

the Newala of to-day does; there was once another Newala in a lovely
valley at the foot of the plateau. I visited it and found scarcely a trace
of houses, only a Christian cemetery, with the graves of several
missionaries and their converts, remaining as a monument of its
former glories. But the surroundings are wonderfully beautiful. A
thick grove of splendid mango-trees closes in the weather-worn
crosses and headstones; behind them, combining the useful and the
agreeable, is a whole plantation of lemon-trees covered with ripe
fruit; not the small African kind, but a much larger and also juicier
imported variety, which drops into the hands of the passing traveller,
without calling for any exertion on his part. Old Newala is now under
the jurisdiction of the native pastor, Daudi, at Chingulungulu, who,
as I am on very friendly terms with him, allows me, as a matter of
course, the use of this lemon-grove during my stay at Newala.
 FEET MUTILATED BY THE RAVAGES OF THE “JIGGER”
(Sarcopsylla penetrans)

The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

some 1,600 feet lower down. The way is not only long and fatiguing,
but the water, when we get it, is thoroughly bad. We are suffering not
only from this, but from the fact that the arrangements at Newala are
nothing short of luxurious. We have a separate kitchen—a hut built
against the boma palisade on the right of the baraza, the interior of
which is not visible from our usual position. Our two cooks were not
long in finding this out, and they consequently do—or rather neglect
to do—what they please. In any case they do not seem to be very
particular about the boiling of our drinking-water—at least I can
attribute to no other cause certain attacks of a dysenteric nature,
from which both Knudsen and I have suffered for some time. If a
man like Omari has to be left unwatched for a moment, he is capable
of anything. Besides this complaint, we are inconvenienced by the
state of our nails, which have become as hard as glass, and crack on
the slightest provocation, and I have the additional infliction of
pimples all over me. As if all this were not enough, we have also, for
the last week been waging war against the jigger, who has found his
Eldorado in the hot sand of the Makonde plateau. Our men are seen
all day long—whenever their chronic colds and the dysentery likewise
raging among them permit—occupied in removing this scourge of
Africa from their feet and trying to prevent the disastrous
consequences of its presence. It is quite common to see natives of
this place with one or two toes missing; many have lost all their toes,
or even the whole front part of the foot, so that a well-formed leg
ends in a shapeless stump. These ravages are caused by the female of
Sarcopsylla penetrans, which bores its way under the skin and there
develops an egg-sac the size of a pea. In all books on the subject, it is
stated that one’s attention is called to the presence of this parasite by
an intolerable itching. This agrees very well with my experience, so
far as the softer parts of the sole, the spaces between and under the
toes, and the side of the foot are concerned, but if the creature
penetrates through the harder parts of the heel or ball of the foot, it
may escape even the most careful search till it has reached maturity.
Then there is no time to be lost, if the horrible ulceration, of which
we see cases by the dozen every day, is to be prevented. It is much
easier, by the way, to discover the insect on the white skin of a
European than on that of a native, on which the dark speck scarcely
shows. The four or five jiggers which, in spite of the fact that I
constantly wore high laced boots, chose my feet to settle in, were
taken out for me by the all-accomplished Knudsen, after which I
thought it advisable to wash out the cavities with corrosive
sublimate. The natives have a different sort of disinfectant—they fill
the hole with scraped roots. In a tiny Makua village on the slope of
the plateau south of Newala, we saw an old woman who had filled all
the spaces under her toe-nails with powdered roots by way of
prophylactic treatment. What will be the result, if any, who can say?
The rest of the many trifling ills which trouble our existence are
really more comic than serious. In the absence of anything else to
smoke, Knudsen and I at last opened a box of cigars procured from
the Indian store-keeper at Lindi, and tried them, with the most
distressing results. Whether they contain opium or some other
narcotic, neither of us can say, but after the tenth puff we were both
“off,” three-quarters stupefied and unspeakably wretched. Slowly we
recovered—and what happened next? Half-an-hour later we were
once more smoking these poisonous concoctions—so insatiable is the
craving for tobacco in the tropics.
Even my present attacks of fever scarcely deserve to be taken
seriously. I have had no less than three here at Newala, all of which
have run their course in an incredibly short time. In the early
afternoon, I am busy with my old natives, asking questions and
making notes. The strong midday coffee has stimulated my spirits to
an extraordinary degree, the brain is active and vigorous, and work
progresses rapidly, while a pleasant warmth pervades the whole
body. Suddenly this gives place to a violent chill, forcing me to put on
my overcoat, though it is only half-past three and the afternoon sun
is at its hottest. Now the brain no longer works with such acuteness
and logical precision; more especially does it fail me in trying to
establish the syntax of the difficult Makua language on which I have
ventured, as if I had not enough to do without it. Under the
circumstances it seems advisable to take my temperature, and I do
so, to save trouble, without leaving my seat, and while going on with
my work. On examination, I find it to be 101·48°. My tutors are
abruptly dismissed and my bed set up in the baraza; a few minutes
later I am in it and treating myself internally with hot water and
lemon-juice.
Three hours later, the thermometer marks nearly 104°, and I make
them carry me back into the tent, bed and all, as I am now perspiring
heavily, and exposure to the cold wind just beginning to blow might
mean a fatal chill. I lie still for a little while, and then find, to my
great relief, that the temperature is not rising, but rather falling. This
is about 7.30 p.m. At 8 p.m. I find, to my unbounded astonishment,
that it has fallen below 98·6°, and I feel perfectly well. I read for an
hour or two, and could very well enjoy a smoke, if I had the
wherewithal—Indian cigars being out of the question.
Having no medical training, I am at a loss to account for this state
of things. It is impossible that these transitory attacks of high fever
should be malarial; it seems more probable that they are due to a
kind of sunstroke. On consulting my note-book, I become more and
more inclined to think this is the case, for these attacks regularly
follow extreme fatigue and long exposure to strong sunshine. They at
least have the advantage of being only short interruptions to my
work, as on the following morning I am always quite fresh and fit.
My treasure of a cook is suffering from an enormous hydrocele which
makes it difficult for him to get up, and Moritz is obliged to keep in
the dark on account of his inflamed eyes. Knudsen’s cook, a raw boy
from somewhere in the bush, knows still less of cooking than Omari;
consequently Nils Knudsen himself has been promoted to the vacant
post. Finding that we had come to the end of our supplies, he began
by sending to Chingulungulu for the four sucking-pigs which we had
bought from Matola and temporarily left in his charge; and when
they came up, neatly packed in a large crate, he callously slaughtered
the biggest of them. The first joint we were thoughtless enough to
entrust for roasting to Knudsen’s mshenzi cook, and it was
consequently uneatable; but we made the rest of the animal into a
jelly which we ate with great relish after weeks of underfeeding,
consuming incredible helpings of it at both midday and evening
meals. The only drawback is a certain want of variety in the tinned
vegetables. Dr. Jäger, to whom the Geographical Commission
entrusted the provisioning of the expeditions—mine as well as his
own—because he had more time on his hands than the rest of us,
seems to have laid in a huge stock of Teltow turnips,[46] an article of
food which is all very well for occasional use, but which quickly palls
when set before one every day; and we seem to have no other tins
left. There is no help for it—we must put up with the turnips; but I
am certain that, once I am home again, I shall not touch them for ten
years to come.
Amid all these minor evils, which, after all, go to make up the
genuine flavour of Africa, there is at least one cheering touch:
Knudsen has, with the dexterity of a skilled mechanic, repaired my 9
× 12 cm. camera, at least so far that I can use it with a little care.
How, in the absence of finger-nails, he was able to accomplish such a
ticklish piece of work, having no tool but a clumsy screw-driver for
taking to pieces and putting together again the complicated
mechanism of the instantaneous shutter, is still a mystery to me; but
he did it successfully. The loss of his finger-nails shows him in a light
contrasting curiously enough with the intelligence evinced by the
above operation; though, after all, it is scarcely surprising after his
ten years’ residence in the bush. One day, at Lindi, he had occasion
to wash a dog, which must have been in need of very thorough
cleansing, for the bottle handed to our friend for the purpose had an
extremely strong smell. Having performed his task in the most
conscientious manner, he perceived with some surprise that the dog
did not appear much the better for it, and was further surprised by
finding his own nails ulcerating away in the course of the next few
days. “How was I to know that carbolic acid has to be diluted?” he
mutters indignantly, from time to time, with a troubled gaze at his
mutilated finger-tips.
 Since we came to Newala we have been making excursions in all
directions through the surrounding country, in accordance with old
habit, and also because the akida Sefu did not get together the tribal
elders from whom I wanted information so speedily as he had
promised. There is, however, no harm done, as, even if seen only
from the outside, the country and people are interesting enough.
The Makonde plateau is like a large rectangular table rounded off
at the corners. Measured from the Indian Ocean to Newala, it is
about seventy-five miles long, and between the Rovuma and the
Lukuledi it averages fifty miles in breadth, so that its superficial area
is about two-thirds of that of the kingdom of Saxony. The surface,
however, is not level, but uniformly inclined from its south-western
edge to the ocean. From the upper edge, on which Newala lies, the
eye ranges for many miles east and north-east, without encountering
any obstacle, over the Makonde bush. It is a green sea, from which
here and there thick clouds of smoke rise, to show that it, too, is
inhabited by men who carry on their tillage like so many other
primitive peoples, by cutting down and burning the bush, and
manuring with the ashes. Even in the radiant light of a tropical day
such a fire is a grand sight.
Much less effective is the impression produced just now by the
great western plain as seen from the edge of the plateau. As often as
time permits, I stroll along this edge, sometimes in one direction,
sometimes in another, in the hope of finding the air clear enough to
let me enjoy the view; but I have always been disappointed.
Wherever one looks, clouds of smoke rise from the burning bush,
and the air is full of smoke and vapour. It is a pity, for under more
favourable circumstances the panorama of the whole country up to
the distant Majeje hills must be truly magnificent. It is of little use
taking photographs now, and an outline sketch gives a very poor idea
of the scenery. In one of these excursions I went out of my way to
make a personal attempt on the Makonde bush. The present edge of
the plateau is the result of a far-reaching process of destruction
through erosion and denudation. The Makonde strata are
everywhere cut into by ravines, which, though short, are hundreds of
yards in depth. In consequence of the loose stratification of these
beds, not only are the walls of these ravines nearly vertical, but their
upper end is closed by an equally steep escarpment, so that the
western edge of the Makonde plateau is hemmed in by a series of
deep, basin-like valleys. In order to get from one side of such a ravine
to the other, I cut my way through the bush with a dozen of my men.
It was a very open part, with more grass than scrub, but even so the
short stretch of less than two hundred yards was very hard work; at
the end of it the men’s calicoes were in rags and they themselves
bleeding from hundreds of scratches, while even our strong khaki
suits had not escaped scatheless.

NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAHUTA

I see increasing reason to believe that the view formed some time
back as to the origin of the Makonde bush is the correct one. I have
no doubt that it is not a natural product, but the result of human
occupation. Those parts of the high country where man—as a very
slight amount of practice enables the eye to perceive at once—has not
yet penetrated with axe and hoe, are still occupied by a splendid
timber forest quite able to sustain a comparison with our mixed
forests in Germany. But wherever man has once built his hut or tilled
his field, this horrible bush springs up. Every phase of this process
may be seen in the course of a couple of hours’ walk along the main
road. From the bush to right or left, one hears the sound of the axe—
not from one spot only, but from several directions at once. A few
steps further on, we can see what is taking place. The brush has been
cut down and piled up in heaps to the height of a yard or more,
between which the trunks of the large trees stand up like the last
pillars of a magnificent ruined building. These, too, present a
melancholy spectacle: the destructive Makonde have ringed them—
cut a broad strip of bark all round to ensure their dying off—and also
piled up pyramids of brush round them. Father and son, mother and
son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too
busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites
so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles
of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken
the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their
smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if
they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes,
perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground.
This work of destruction is carried out by the Makonde alike on the
virgin forest and on the bush which has sprung up on sites already
cultivated and deserted. In the second case they are saved the trouble
of burning the large trees, these being entirely absent in the
secondary bush.
After burning this piece of forest ground and loosening it with the
hoe, the native sows his corn and plants his vegetables. All over the
country, he goes in for bed-culture, which requires, and, in fact,
receives, the most careful attention. Weeds are nowhere tolerated in
the south of German East Africa. The crops may fail on the plains,
where droughts are frequent, but never on the plateau with its
abundant rains and heavy dews. Its fortunate inhabitants even have
the satisfaction of seeing the proud Wayao and Wamakua working
for them as labourers, driven by hunger to serve where they were
accustomed to rule.
But the light, sandy soil is soon exhausted, and would yield no
harvest the second year if cultivated twice running. This fact has
been familiar to the native for ages; consequently he provides in
time, and, while his crop is growing, prepares the next plot with axe
and firebrand. Next year he plants this with his various crops and
lets the first piece lie fallow. For a short time it remains waste and
desolate; then nature steps in to repair the destruction wrought by
man; a thousand new growths spring out of the exhausted soil, and
even the old stumps put forth fresh shoots. Next year the new growth
is up to one’s knees, and in a few years more it is that terrible,
impenetrable bush, which maintains its position till the black
occupier of the land has made the round of all the available sites and
come back to his starting point.
The Makonde are, body and soul, so to speak, one with this bush.
According to my Yao informants, indeed, their name means nothing
else but “bush people.” Their own tradition says that they have been
settled up here for a very long time, but to my surprise they laid great
stress on an original immigration. Their old homes were in the
south-east, near Mikindani and the mouth of the Rovuma, whence
their peaceful forefathers were driven by the continual raids of the
Sakalavas from Madagascar and the warlike Shirazis[47] of the coast,
to take refuge on the almost inaccessible plateau. I have studied
African ethnology for twenty years, but the fact that changes of
population in this apparently quiet and peaceable corner of the earth
could have been occasioned by outside enterprises taking place on
the high seas, was completely new to me. It is, no doubt, however,
correct.
The charming tribal legend of the Makonde—besides informing us
of other interesting matters—explains why they have to live in the
thickest of the bush and a long way from the edge of the plateau,
instead of making their permanent homes beside the purling brooks
and springs of the low country.
“The place where the tribe originated is Mahuta, on the southern
side of the plateau towards the Rovuma, where of old time there was
nothing but thick bush. Out of this bush came a man who never
washed himself or shaved his head, and who ate and drank but little.
He went out and made a human figure from the wood of a tree
growing in the open country, which he took home to his abode in the
bush and there set it upright. In the night this image came to life and
was a woman. The man and woman went down together to the
Rovuma to wash themselves. Here the woman gave birth to a still-
born child. They left that place and passed over the high land into the
valley of the Mbemkuru, where the woman had another child, which
was also born dead. Then they returned to the high bush country of
Mahuta, where the third child was born, which lived and grew up. In
course of time, the couple had many more children, and called
themselves Wamatanda. These were the ancestral stock of the
Makonde, also called Wamakonde,[48] i.e., aborigines. Their
forefather, the man from the bush, gave his children the command to
bury their dead upright, in memory of the mother of their race who
was cut out of wood and awoke to life when standing upright. He also
warned them against settling in the valleys and near large streams,
for sickness and death dwelt there. They were to make it a rule to
have their huts at least an hour’s walk from the nearest watering-
place; then their children would thrive and escape illness.”
The explanation of the name Makonde given by my informants is
somewhat different from that contained in the above legend, which I
extract from a little book (small, but packed with information), by
Pater Adams, entitled Lindi und sein Hinterland. Otherwise, my
results agree exactly with the statements of the legend. Washing?
Hapana—there is no such thing. Why should they do so? As it is, the
supply of water scarcely suffices for cooking and drinking; other
people do not wash, so why should the Makonde distinguish himself
by such needless eccentricity? As for shaving the head, the short,
woolly crop scarcely needs it,[49] so the second ancestral precept is
likewise easy enough to follow. Beyond this, however, there is
nothing ridiculous in the ancestor’s advice. I have obtained from
various local artists a fairly large number of figures carved in wood,
ranging from fifteen to twenty-three inches in height, and
representing women belonging to the great group of the Mavia,
Makonde, and Matambwe tribes. The carving is remarkably well
done and renders the female type with great accuracy, especially the
keloid ornamentation, to be described later on. As to the object and
meaning of their works the sculptors either could or (more probably)
would tell me nothing, and I was forced to content myself with the
scanty information vouchsafed by one man, who said that the figures
were merely intended to represent the nembo—the artificial
deformations of pelele, ear-discs, and keloids. The legend recorded
by Pater Adams places these figures in a new light. They must surely
be more than mere dolls; and we may even venture to assume that
they are—though the majority of present-day Makonde are probably
unaware of the fact—representations of the tribal ancestress.
 The references in the legend to the descent from Mahuta to the
Rovuma, and to a journey across the highlands into the Mbekuru
valley, undoubtedly indicate the previous history of the tribe, the
travels of the ancestral pair typifying the migrations of their
descendants. The descent to the neighbouring Rovuma valley, with
its extraordinary fertility and great abundance of game, is intelligible
at a glance—but the crossing of the Lukuledi depression, the ascent
to the Rondo Plateau and the descent to the Mbemkuru, also lie
within the bounds of probability, for all these districts have exactly
the same character as the extreme south. Now, however, comes a
point of especial interest for our bacteriological age. The primitive
Makonde did not enjoy their lives in the marshy river-valleys.
Disease raged among them, and many died. It was only after they
had returned to their original home near Mahuta, that the health
conditions of these people improved. We are very apt to think of the
African as a stupid person whose ignorance of nature is only equalled
by his fear of it, and who looks on all mishaps as caused by evil
spirits and malignant natural powers. It is much more correct to
assume in this case that the people very early learnt to distinguish
districts infested with malaria from those where it is absent.
This knowledge is crystallized in the
ancestral warning against settling in the
valleys and near the great waters, the
dwelling-places of disease and death. At the
same time, for security against the hostile
Mavia south of the Rovuma, it was enacted
that every settlement must be not less than a
certain distance from the southern edge of the
plateau. Such in fact is their mode of life at the
present day. It is not such a bad one, and
certainly they are both safer and more
comfortable than the Makua, the recent
intruders from the south, who have made USUAL METHOD OF
good their footing on the western edge of the CLOSING HUT-DOOR
plateau, extending over a fairly wide belt of
country. Neither Makua nor Makonde show in their dwellings
anything of the size and comeliness of the Yao houses in the plain,
especially at Masasi, Chingulungulu and Zuza’s. Jumbe Chauro, a
Makonde hamlet not far from Newala, on the road to Mahuta, is the
most important settlement of the tribe I have yet seen, and has fairly
spacious huts. But how slovenly is their construction compared with
the palatial residences of the elephant-hunters living in the plain.
The roofs are still more untidy than in the general run of huts during
the dry season, the walls show here and there the scanty beginnings
or the lamentable remains of the mud plastering, and the interior is a
veritable dog-kennel; dirt, dust and disorder everywhere. A few huts
only show any attempt at division into rooms, and this consists
merely of very roughly-made bamboo partitions. In one point alone
have I noticed any indication of progress—in the method of fastening
the door. Houses all over the south are secured in a simple but
ingenious manner. The door consists of a set of stout pieces of wood
or bamboo, tied with bark-string to two cross-pieces, and moving in
two grooves round one of the door-posts, so as to open inwards. If
the owner wishes to leave home, he takes two logs as thick as a man’s
upper arm and about a yard long. One of these is placed obliquely
against the middle of the door from the inside, so as to form an angle
of from 60° to 75° with the ground. He then places the second piece
horizontally across the first, pressing it downward with all his might.
It is kept in place by two strong posts planted in the ground a few
inches inside the door. This fastening is absolutely safe, but of course
cannot be applied to both doors at once, otherwise how could the
owner leave or enter his house? I have not yet succeeded in finding
out how the back door is fastened.

MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

 This is the general way of closing a house. The Makonde at Jumbe
Chauro, however, have a much more complicated, solid and original
one. Here, too, the door is as already described, except that there is
only one post on the inside, standing by itself about six inches from
one side of the doorway. Opposite this post is a hole in the wall just
large enough to admit a man’s arm. The door is closed inside by a
large wooden bolt passing through a hole in this post and pressing
with its free end against the door. The other end has three holes into
which fit three pegs running in vertical grooves inside the post. The
door is opened with a wooden key about a foot long, somewhat
curved and sloped off at the butt; the other end has three pegs
corresponding to the holes, in the bolt, so that, when it is thrust
through the hole in the wall and inserted into the rectangular
opening in the post, the pegs can be lifted and the bolt drawn out.[50]

MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY

With no small pride first one householder and then a second

showed me on the spot the action of this greatest invention of the
Makonde Highlands. To both with an admiring exclamation of
“Vizuri sana!” (“Very fine!”). I expressed the wish to take back these
marvels with me to Ulaya, to show the Wazungu what clever fellows
the Makonde are. Scarcely five minutes after my return to camp at
Newala, the two men came up sweating under the weight of two
heavy logs which they laid down at my feet, handing over at the same
time the keys of the fallen fortress. Arguing, logically enough, that if
the key was wanted, the lock would be wanted with it, they had taken
their axes and chopped down the posts—as it never occurred to them
to dig them out of the ground and so bring them intact. Thus I have
two badly damaged specimens, and the owners, instead of praise,
come in for a blowing-up.
The Makua huts in the environs of Newala are especially
miserable; their more than slovenly construction reminds one of the
temporary erections of the Makua at Hatia’s, though the people here
have not been concerned in a war. It must therefore be due to
congenital idleness, or else to the absence of a powerful chief. Even
the baraza at Mlipa’s, a short hour’s walk south-east of Newala,
shares in this general neglect. While public buildings in this country
are usually looked after more or less carefully, this is in evident
danger of being blown over by the first strong easterly gale. The only
attractive object in this whole district is the grave of the late chief
Mlipa. I visited it in the morning, while the sun was still trying with
partial success to break through the rolling mists, and the circular
grove of tall euphorbias, which, with a broken pot, is all that marks
the old king’s resting-place, impressed one with a touch of pathos.
Even my very materially-minded carriers seemed to feel something
of the sort, for instead of their usual ribald songs, they chanted
solemnly, as we marched on through the dense green of the Makonde
bush:—
 “We shall arrive with the great master; we stand in a row and have
no fear about getting our food and our money from the Serkali (the
Government). We are not afraid; we are going along with the great
master, the lion; we are going down to the coast and back.”
With regard to the characteristic features of the various tribes here
on the western edge of the plateau, I can arrive at no other
conclusion than the one already come to in the plain, viz., that it is
impossible for anyone but a trained anthropologist to assign any
given individual at once to his proper tribe. In fact, I think that even
an anthropological specialist, after the most careful examination,
might find it a difficult task to decide. The whole congeries of peoples
collected in the region bounded on the west by the great Central
African rift, Tanganyika and Nyasa, and on the east by the Indian
Ocean, are closely related to each other—some of their languages are
only distinguished from one another as dialects of the same speech,
and no doubt all the tribes present the same shape of skull and
structure of skeleton. Thus, surely, there can be no very striking
differences in outward appearance.
 Even did such exist, I should have no time
to concern myself with them, for day after day,
I have to see or hear, as the case may be—in
any case to grasp and record—an
extraordinary number of ethnographic
phenomena. I am almost disposed to think it
fortunate that some departments of inquiry, at
least, are barred by external circumstances.
Chief among these is the subject of iron-
working. We are apt to think of Africa as a
country where iron ore is everywhere, so to
speak, to be picked up by the roadside, and
where it would be quite surprising if the
inhabitants had not learnt to smelt the
material ready to their hand. In fact, the
knowledge of this art ranges all over the
continent, from the Kabyles in the north to the
Kafirs in the south. Here between the Rovuma
and the Lukuledi the conditions are not so
favourable. According to the statements of the
Makonde, neither ironstone nor any other
form of iron ore is known to them. They have
not therefore advanced to the art of smelting
the metal, but have hitherto bought all their
THE ANCESTRESS OF
THE MAKONDE
iron implements from neighbouring tribes.
Even in the plain the inhabitants are not much
better off. Only one man now living is said to
understand the art of smelting iron. This old fundi lives close to
Huwe, that isolated, steep-sided block of granite which rises out of
the green solitude between Masasi and Chingulungulu, and whose
jagged and splintered top meets the traveller’s eye everywhere. While
still at Masasi I wished to see this man at work, but was told that,
frightened by the rising, he had retired across the Rovuma, though
he would soon return. All subsequent inquiries as to whether the
fundi had come back met with the genuine African answer, “Bado”
(“Not yet”).
 BRAZIER

Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I

came across in the bush near Akundonde’s. This man is the favourite
of women, and therefore no doubt of the gods; he welds the glittering
brass rods purchased at the coast into those massive, heavy rings
which, on the wrists and ankles of the local fair ones, continually give
me fresh food for admiration. Like every decent master-craftsman he
had all his tools with him, consisting of a pair of bellows, three
crucibles and a hammer—nothing more, apparently. He was quite
willing to show his skill, and in a twinkling had fixed his bellows on
the ground. They are simply two goat-skins, taken off whole, the four
legs being closed by knots, while the upper opening, intended to
admit the air, is kept stretched by two pieces of wood. At the lower
end of the skin a smaller opening is left into which a wooden tube is
stuck. The fundi has quickly borrowed a heap of wood-embers from
the nearest hut; he then fixes the free ends of the two tubes into an
earthen pipe, and clamps them to the ground by means of a bent
piece of wood. Now he fills one of his small clay crucibles, the dross
on which shows that they have been long in use, with the yellow
material, places it in the midst of the embers, which, at present are
only faintly glimmering, and begins his work. In quick alternation
the smith’s two hands move up and down with the open ends of the
bellows; as he raises his hand he holds the slit wide open, so as to let
the air enter the skin bag unhindered. In pressing it down he closes
the bag, and the air puffs through the bamboo tube and clay pipe into
the fire, which quickly burns up. The smith, however, does not keep
on with this work, but beckons to another man, who relieves him at
the bellows, while he takes some more tools out of a large skin pouch
carried on his back. I look on in wonder as, with a smooth round
stick about the thickness of a finger, he bores a few vertical holes into
the clean sand of the soil. This should not be difficult, yet the man
seems to be taking great pains over it. Then he fastens down to the
ground, with a couple of wooden clamps, a neat little trough made by
splitting a joint of bamboo in half, so that the ends are closed by the
two knots. At last the yellow metal has attained the right consistency,
and the fundi lifts the crucible from the fire by means of two sticks
split at the end to serve as tongs. A short swift turn to the left—a
tilting of the crucible—and the molten brass, hissing and giving forth
clouds of smoke, flows first into the bamboo mould and then into the
holes in the ground.
The technique of this backwoods craftsman may not be very far
advanced, but it cannot be denied that he knows how to obtain an
adequate result by the simplest means. The ladies of highest rank in
this country—that is to say, those who can afford it, wear two kinds
of these massive brass rings, one cylindrical, the other semicircular
in section. The latter are cast in the most ingenious way in the
bamboo mould, the former in the circular hole in the sand. It is quite
a simple matter for the fundi to fit these bars to the limbs of his fair
customers; with a few light strokes of his hammer he bends the
pliable brass round arm or ankle without further inconvenience to
the wearer.
SHAPING THE POT

SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB

CUTTING THE EDGE

 FINISHING THE BOTTOM

LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE

BURNING

FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE

 LIGHTING THE FARTHER SIDE OF
THE PILE

TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL

NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI

Pottery is an art which must always and everywhere excite the
interest of the student, just because it is so intimately connected with
the development of human culture, and because its relics are one of
the principal factors in the reconstruction of our own condition in
prehistoric times. I shall always remember with pleasure the two or
three afternoons at Masasi when Salim Matola’s mother, a slightly-
built, graceful, pleasant-looking woman, explained to me with
touching patience, by means of concrete illustrations, the ceramic art
of her people. The only implements for this primitive process were a
lump of clay in her left hand, and in the right a calabash containing
the following valuables: the fragment of a maize-cob stripped of all
its grains, a smooth, oval pebble, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, a
few chips of gourd-shell, a bamboo splinter about the length of one’s
hand, a small shell, and a bunch of some herb resembling spinach.
 Nothing more. The woman scraped with the
shell a round, shallow hole in the soft, fine
sand of the soil, and, when an active young
girl had filled the calabash with water for her,
she began to knead the clay. As if by magic it
gradually assumed the shape of a rough but
already well-shaped vessel, which only wanted
a little touching up with the instruments
before mentioned. I looked out with the
MAKUA WOMAN closest attention for any indication of the use
MAKING A POT. of the potter’s wheel, in however rudimentary
SHOWS THE a form, but no—hapana (there is none). The
BEGINNINGS OF THE embryo pot stood firmly in its little
POTTER’S WHEEL
depression, and the woman walked round it in
a stooping posture, whether she was removing
small stones or similar foreign bodies with the maize-cob, smoothing
the inner or outer surface with the splinter of bamboo, or later, after
letting it dry for a day, pricking in the ornamentation with a pointed
bit of gourd-shell, or working out the bottom, or cutting the edge
with a sharp bamboo knife, or giving the last touches to the finished
vessel. This occupation of the women is infinitely toilsome, but it is
without doubt an accurate reproduction of the process in use among
our ancestors of the Neolithic and Bronze ages.
There is no doubt that the invention of pottery, an item in human
progress whose importance cannot be over-estimated, is due to
women. Rough, coarse and unfeeling, the men of the horde range
over the countryside. When the united cunning of the hunters has
succeeded in killing the game; not one of them thinks of carrying
home the spoil. A bright fire, kindled by a vigorous wielding of the
drill, is crackling beside them; the animal has been cleaned and cut
up secundum artem, and, after a slight singeing, will soon disappear
under their sharp teeth; no one all this time giving a single thought
to wife or child.
To what shifts, on the other hand, the primitive wife, and still more
the primitive mother, was put! Not even prehistoric stomachs could
endure an unvarying diet of raw food. Something or other suggested
the beneficial effect of hot water on the majority of approved but
indigestible dishes. Perhaps a neighbour had tried holding the hard
roots or tubers over the fire in a calabash filled with water—or maybe
an ostrich-egg-shell, or a hastily improvised vessel of bark. They
became much softer and more palatable than they had previously
been; but, unfortunately, the vessel could not stand the fire and got
charred on the outside. That can be remedied, thought our
ancestress, and plastered a layer of wet clay round a similar vessel.
This is an improvement; the cooking utensil remains uninjured, but
the heat of the fire has shrunk it, so that it is loose in its shell. The
next step is to detach it, so, with a firm grip and a jerk, shell and
kernel are separated, and pottery is invented. Perhaps, however, the
discovery which led to an intelligent use of the burnt-clay shell, was
made in a slightly different way. Ostrich-eggs and calabashes are not
to be found in every part of the world, but everywhere mankind has
arrived at the art of making baskets out of pliant materials, such as
bark, bast, strips of palm-leaf, supple twigs, etc. Our inventor has no
water-tight vessel provided by nature. “Never mind, let us line the
basket with clay.” This answers the purpose, but alas! the basket gets
burnt over the blazing fire, the woman watches the process of
cooking with increasing uneasiness, fearing a leak, but no leak
appears. The food, done to a turn, is eaten with peculiar relish; and
the cooking-vessel is examined, half in curiosity, half in satisfaction
at the result. The plastic clay is now hard as stone, and at the same
time looks exceedingly well, for the neat plaiting of the burnt basket
is traced all over it in a pretty pattern. Thus, simultaneously with
pottery, its ornamentation was invented.
Primitive woman has another claim to respect. It was the man,
roving abroad, who invented the art of producing fire at will, but the
woman, unable to imitate him in this, has been a Vestal from the
earliest times. Nothing gives so much trouble as the keeping alight of
the smouldering brand, and, above all, when all the men are absent
from the camp. Heavy rain-clouds gather, already the first large
drops are falling, the first gusts of the storm rage over the plain. The
little flame, a greater anxiety to the woman than her own children,
flickers unsteadily in the blast. What is to be done? A sudden thought
occurs to her, and in an instant she has constructed a primitive hut
out of strips of bark, to protect the flame against rain and wind.
This, or something very like it, was the way in which the principle
of the house was discovered; and even the most hardened misogynist
cannot fairly refuse a woman the credit of it. The protection of the
hearth-fire from the weather is the germ from which the human
dwelling was evolved. Men had little, if any share, in this forward
step, and that only at a late stage. Even at the present day, the
plastering of the housewall with clay and the manufacture of pottery
are exclusively the women’s business. These are two very significant
survivals. Our European kitchen-garden, too, is originally a woman’s
invention, and the hoe, the primitive instrument of agriculture, is,
characteristically enough, still used in this department. But the
noblest achievement which we owe to the other sex is unquestionably
the art of cookery. Roasting alone—the oldest process—is one for
which men took the hint (a very obvious one) from nature. It must
have been suggested by the scorched carcase of some animal
overtaken by the destructive forest-fires. But boiling—the process of
improving organic substances by the help of water heated to boiling-
point—is a much later discovery. It is so recent that it has not even
yet penetrated to all parts of the world. The Polynesians understand
how to steam food, that is, to cook it, neatly wrapped in leaves, in a
hole in the earth between hot stones, the air being excluded, and
(sometimes) a few drops of water sprinkled on the stones; but they
do not understand boiling.
To come back from this digression, we find that the slender Nyasa
woman has, after once more carefully examining the finished pot,
put it aside in the shade to dry. On the following day she sends me
word by her son, Salim Matola, who is always on hand, that she is
going to do the burning, and, on coming out of my house, I find her
already hard at work. She has spread on the ground a layer of very
dry sticks, about as thick as one’s thumb, has laid the pot (now of a
yellowish-grey colour) on them, and is piling brushwood round it.
My faithful Pesa mbili, the mnyampara, who has been standing by,
most obligingly, with a lighted stick, now hands it to her. Both of
them, blowing steadily, light the pile on the lee side, and, when the
flame begins to catch, on the weather side also. Soon the whole is in a
blaze, but the dry fuel is quickly consumed and the fire dies down, so
that we see the red-hot vessel rising from the ashes. The woman
turns it continually with a long stick, sometimes one way and
sometimes another, so that it may be evenly heated all over. In
twenty minutes she rolls it out of the ash-heap, takes up the bundle
of spinach, which has been lying for two days in a jar of water, and
sprinkles the red-hot clay with it. The places where the drops fall are
marked by black spots on the uniform reddish-brown surface. With a
sigh of relief, and with visible satisfaction, the woman rises to an
erect position; she is standing just in a line between me and the fire,
from which a cloud of smoke is just rising: I press the ball of my
camera, the shutter clicks—the apotheosis is achieved! Like a
priestess, representative of her inventive sex, the graceful woman
stands: at her feet the hearth-fire she has given us beside her the
invention she has devised for us, in the background the home she has
built for us.
At Newala, also, I have had the manufacture of pottery carried on
in my presence. Technically the process is better than that already
described, for here we find the beginnings of the potter’s wheel,
which does not seem to exist in the plains; at least I have seen
nothing of the sort. The artist, a frightfully stupid Makua woman, did
not make a depression in the ground to receive the pot she was about
to shape, but used instead a large potsherd. Otherwise, she went to
work in much the same way as Salim’s mother, except that she saved
herself the trouble of walking round and round her work by squatting
at her ease and letting the pot and potsherd rotate round her; this is
surely the first step towards a machine. But it does not follow that
the pot was improved by the process. It is true that it was beautifully
rounded and presented a very creditable appearance when finished,
but the numerous large and small vessels which I have seen, and, in
part, collected, in the “less advanced” districts, are no less so. We
moderns imagine that instruments of precision are necessary to
produce excellent results. Go to the prehistoric collections of our
museums and look at the pots, urns and bowls of our ancestors in the
dim ages of the past, and you will at once perceive your error.
MAKING LONGITUDINAL CUT IN
BARK

DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG

REMOVING THE OUTER BARK

 BEATING THE BARK

WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT

SOFT

MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA

To-day, nearly the whole population of German East Africa is
clothed in imported calico. This was not always the case; even now in
some parts of the north dressed skins are still the prevailing wear,
and in the north-western districts—east and north of Lake
Tanganyika—lies a zone where bark-cloth has not yet been
superseded. Probably not many generations have passed since such
bark fabrics and kilts of skins were the only clothing even in the
south. Even to-day, large quantities of this bright-red or drab
material are still to be found; but if we wish to see it, we must look in
the granaries and on the drying stages inside the native huts, where
it serves less ambitious uses as wrappings for those seeds and fruits
which require to be packed with special care. The salt produced at
Masasi, too, is packed for transport to a distance in large sheets of
bark-cloth. Wherever I found it in any degree possible, I studied the
process of making this cloth. The native requisitioned for the
purpose arrived, carrying a log between two and three yards long and
as thick as his thigh, and nothing else except a curiously-shaped
mallet and the usual long, sharp and pointed knife which all men and
boys wear in a belt at their backs without a sheath—horribile dictu!
[51]
Silently he squats down before me, and with two rapid cuts has
drawn a couple of circles round the log some two yards apart, and
slits the bark lengthwise between them with the point of his knife.
With evident care, he then scrapes off the outer rind all round the
log, so that in a quarter of an hour the inner red layer of the bark
shows up brightly-coloured between the two untouched ends. With
some trouble and much caution, he now loosens the bark at one end,
and opens the cylinder. He then stands up, takes hold of the free
edge with both hands, and turning it inside out, slowly but steadily
pulls it off in one piece. Now comes the troublesome work of
scraping all superfluous particles of outer bark from the outside of
the long, narrow piece of material, while the inner side is carefully
scrutinised for defective spots. At last it is ready for beating. Having
signalled to a friend, who immediately places a bowl of water beside
him, the artificer damps his sheet of bark all over, seizes his mallet,
lays one end of the stuff on the smoothest spot of the log, and
hammers away slowly but continuously. “Very simple!” I think to
myself. “Why, I could do that, too!”—but I am forced to change my
opinions a little later on; for the beating is quite an art, if the fabric is
not to be beaten to pieces. To prevent the breaking of the fibres, the
stuff is several times folded across, so as to interpose several
thicknesses between the mallet and the block. At last the required
state is reached, and the fundi seizes the sheet, still folded, by both
ends, and wrings it out, or calls an assistant to take one end while he
holds the other. The cloth produced in this way is not nearly so fine
and uniform in texture as the famous Uganda bark-cloth, but it is
quite soft, and, above all, cheap.
Now, too, I examine the mallet. My craftsman has been using the
simpler but better form of this implement, a conical block of some
hard wood, its base—the striking surface—being scored across and
across with more or less deeply-cut grooves, and the handle stuck
into a hole in the middle. The other and earlier form of mallet is
shaped in the same way, but the head is fastened by an ingenious
network of bark strips into the split bamboo serving as a handle. The
observation so often made, that ancient customs persist longest in
connection with religious ceremonies and in the life of children, here
finds confirmation. As we shall soon see, bark-cloth is still worn
during the unyago,[52] having been prepared with special solemn
ceremonies; and many a mother, if she has no other garment handy,
will still put her little one into a kilt of bark-cloth, which, after all,
looks better, besides being more in keeping with its African
surroundings, than the ridiculous bit of print from Ulaya.
MAKUA WOMEN