Of course, not all human beings were equally capable of such activity: chiefs and ritual ex- perts, for example, had unusual creative power. Above all, though, male work differed funda- mentally from that of females. Before the introduction of the plow, women were associated primarily with agriculture and reproduction. They were the source of the most basic social value, human life itself. But their very fertility generated a polluting heat (bothitho) that could "spoil" (go senya) the ritual, political, and economic projects of men (among them, rainmaking and initiation, ancestral veneration and animal husbandry). Thus they were held to need phys- ical confinement and were denied an active role in the transactions that shaped the public world-especially cattle exchanges and politico-legal debate. By contrast, males were re- garded as "cool" (tshididi); they had the qualities necessary for effective social production and, in particular, for the management of stock. As public actors, men represented themselves and their families through the medium of cattle, the currency against which they exchanged rights in women and dependents. With beasts they made clients of other men, and entered into alli- ances with both the living and the dead, extending themselves as they built and rebuilt a cen- tralized political community.