The political organization of the native Australians, low as they were
in the social scale, seems to have been based chiefly on the claim of
each wretched wandering tribe to a definite territory.[88] In north
central Australia, where even a very sparse population has sufficed to
saturate the sterile soil, tribal boundaries have become fixed and
inviolable, so that even war brings no transfer of territory. Land and
people are identified. The bond is cemented by their primitive religion,
for the tribe's spirit ancestors occupied this special territory.[89] In
a like manner a very definite conception of tribal ownership of land
prevails among the Bushmen and Bechuanas of South Africa; and to the
pastoral Hereros the alienation of their land is inconceivable.[90] [See
map page 105.]

A tribe of hunters can never be more than a small horde, because the
simple, monotonous savage economy permits no concentration of
population, no division of labor except that between the sexes, and
hence no evolution of classes. The common economic level of all is
reflected in the simple social organization,[91] which necessarily has
little cohesion, because the group must be prepared to break up and
scatter in smaller divisions, when its members increase or its savage
supplies decrease even a little. Such primitive groups cannot grow into
larger units, because these would demand more roots sent down into the
sustaining soil; but they multiply by fission, like the infusorial
monads, and thereafter lead independent existences remote from each
other. This is the explanation of multiplication of dialects among
savage tribes.

[Sidenote: Land bond in fisher tribes.]