When by the development of agricultural pursuits the nomadic mode of
life is brought to an end, when the clan remains stationary upon some
piece of territory surrounded by a strip of forest-land, or other
boundaries natural or artificial, then the clan becomes a
mark-community. The profound linguistic researches of Pictet, Fick, and
others have made it probable that at the time when the Old-Aryan
language was broken up into the dialects from which the existing
languages of Europe are descended, the Aryan tribes were passing from a
purely pastoral stage of barbarism into an incipient agricultural stage,
somewhat like that which characterized the Iroquois tribes in America in
the seventeenth century. The comparative study of institutions leads to
results in harmony with this view, showing us the mark-community of our
Teutonic ancestors with the clear traces of its origin in the more
primitive clan; though, with Mr. Kemble, I do not doubt that by the time
of Tacitus the German tribes had long since reached the
agricultural stage.
Territorially the old Teutonic mark consisted of three divisions. There
was the _village mark_, where the people lived in houses crowded closely
together, no doubt for defensive purposes; there was the _arable mark_,
divided into as many lots as there were householders; and there was the
_common mark_, or border-strip of untilled land, wherein all the
inhabitants of the village had common rights of pasturage and of cutting
firewood.
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