Indeed, so obvious is this "productive" character of the men's work that in the conventional economic writings the hunter's work is taken as the type of primitive industry.

But such is not the barbarian's sense of the matter.
In his own eyes he is not a labourer, and he is not to be classed with the women in this respect; nor is his effort to be classed with the women's drudgery, as labour or industry, in such a sense as to admit of its being confounded with the latter.

There is in all barbarian communities a profound sense of the disparity between man's and woman's work.

His work may conduce to the maintenance of the group, but it is felt that it does so through an excellence and an efficacy of a kind that cannot without derogation be compared with the uneventful diligence of the women.
At a farther step backward in the cultural scale--among savage groups--the differentiation of employments is still less elaborate and the invidious distinction between classes and employments is less consistent and less rigorous.

Unequivocal instances of a primitive savage culture are hard to find.