The present Piaroas of Venezuela are in the habit of painting their
bodies by a process different from that of the North American Indian.
They make stamps of wood, which, being colored (as types are with
ink), they apply to their bodies. Fig. 982 shows examples of these
stamps. [See fig. 343 of the present paper.] The designs are
substantially the same as some petroglyphs. They either copied the
models they found carved on the rocks by peoples who preceded them, or
they knew the meaning and preserved the tradition. The former is the
only tenable hypothesis. Painting is to the Piaroas both ornamentation
and necessity. It serves, not only as a garment to protect them
against insects, but becomes a fancy costume to grace their feasts and
meetings.
These designs are not presented as Swastikas nor of any evolution or
derivation from one. They show a style common enough to Central and South
America, to the Antilles and the Canary Islands,[305] which might easily
produce a Swastika. The aboriginal designer of these might, if we depend
upon the theory of psychological similarity of culture among all peoples,
at his next attempt make a Swastika. Yet, with the hundreds of similar
patterns made during the centuries of aboriginal occupation and extending
throughout the countries named, none of these seem ever to have produced a
Swastika.