Excerpt from The Teaching of Elementary School Gymnastics Primitive life. - During all these ages our ancestors lived a life of the most strenuous physical exertion. As far back as. Savage life in the temperate zone can be traced, the men hunted, fished, carried on war, and took part in religious ceremonies; the women made the clothing and the shelter, prepared the food, and made all the utensils needed in their work, besides caring for the children and the domestic animals. These two types of bodily exercise are quite different; that of the men was severe to the highest degree for a time, with periods of complete rest between; a type of exercise we now call athletic. That of the women was less severe but more steady and continuous; of the type of manual labor. As a result of these occupations both men and women were strong and vigorous; they lived and thrived in spite of unsanitary conditions and exposure to all kinds of weather and hardship. These two types of bodily exercise, carried on so vigorously for so many successive genera tions, no doubt did much to develop the two types of bodily form and proportions that men and women now inherit. Civilized life - If we continue to study the occupations of our ancestors down to a later day, we find that they changed their habits of life a little from time to time, but until very lately they still led lives of great bodily activity. The pioneers of the early colonies along our Atlantic coast, and even those who settled our own state in the early part of the last century, were people of strong physique, manv of them not a whit inferior in strength and endurance to the savages who lived here before them. One hundred years ago fully 95970 of the population of the United States lived in the country, and the same was true of the middle west fifty years ago. Men cleared the forest with the axe, sowed and planted by hand, 'cut their grain with sickles, and threshed it with fiails. Women did all the household work, including all of the dairy and laundry work, made all the clothing, and not far back they also made the cloth from which the clothing was made. Pioneer life called for muscular work and developed a sturdy race of people. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.