In 1867 the Abbé Bourgeois found at Thenay, near Pont-levoy
(Loir-et-Cher), in a marly bank belonging to the most ancient part of
the middle Tertiary formation, fragments of silex which bore traces of
the action of fire. This fire had not been lighted by accidental causes,
for, says Mr. DeMortillet (_Le Prehistorique_, p. 90), the causes of
instantaneous conflagrations can be only volcanic fires, fermentations,
and lightning. "Now, in the entire region there is no trace of volcanic
action, and neither are there any traces of turfy or vegetable deposits
capable of giving rise to spontaneous inflammations--phenomena that
are always very rare and very exceptional, as are also conflagrations
started by lightning. Well, in the Thenay marls, the pieces of silex
that had undergone the action of fire were found disseminated at
different levels, and this could not have been a simple accident, but
was evidently something that had been done intentionally. There existed,
then, during the Aquitanian epoch, a being who was acquainted with fire
and knew how to produce it."
Mr. De Mortillet supposes that this being was an animal intermediate
between man and the monkey, which he calls the _anthropopithecus_.
This precursor of man made use of fire for splitting silex and
manufacturing from it instruments whose cutting edge he perfected by
means of a series of retouchings produced by slight percussions upon one
of the surfaces only.
I shall not enter in this place upon a discussion as to the existence
of an anthropopithecus or Tertiary man, whom every one does not as yet
accept, but will confine myself to giving the facts as to the use of
fire in the remotest epochs, incontestable proofs of which exist from
the time at which Quaternary man made his appearance. How this was
discovered is indicated, according to Aryan tradition, by the Vedic
hymns. The ancestors of the Aryans, these tell us, had seen the lighting
dart forth from the shock of black clouds. They had seen the spark that
fired the forests issue from the friction of dry branches agitated by
the storm. They took a branch of soft wood, _arani_, and passing a thong
around a branch of hard wood, _pramontha_, they caused it to revolve
rapidly in a cavity in the _arani_, and thus evoked the god _Agni_, whom
they nourished with libations of clarified butter, _soma_.
The _Pramontha_, became the _Prometheus_ of the Greeks, the Titan who
stole the fire, and it is from the Sanscrit _Agni_ that is derived the
Latin _Ignis_, "fire," and the Greek [Greek: Agnos], "pure," and the
_Agnus Dei_ of the Christians, who purifies all.
Orientalists generally agree that the sign which is seen under the forms
[inline illustration], [inline illustration], or [inline illustration],
on a large number of objects of Aryan origin is a sort of sacred
hieroglyphic, representing the _arani_ or _svastika_, formed of two
pieces of soft wood fixed by four pins in such a way as not to revolve
under the pressure of the Pramontha.
This process of producing fire is also found among a host of more or
less savage peoples, and especially in India, where, during the last
month of the great feast of sacrifices, the sacred fire must always be
kindled three hundred and sixty times a day with nine different kinds of
wood that are prescribed by the rite.
Fig. 1 shows the arrangement in use among the Eskimos, and Fig. 2 that
employed by the Indians of North America.
In 1828 there still existed at Essen, in Hanover, an analogous apparatus
designed to produce an alarm fire. This was a large, horizontal, round
wooden bar whose extremities pivoted in two apertures formed in vertical
posts, and which was provided with a cord that was wound around it
several times. Several persons, by pulling on the ends of this cord,
caused the bar to revolve alternately in one direction and the other,
and the heat developed by the friction lighted some tow that had
previously been inserted in one of the apertures in the post.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--ESKIMO PRODUCING FIRE BY FRICTION.]
It is certain that the alternate motion must have been produced directly
by hand before being effected by cords. This simpler process is still in
use in Tasmania, Australia, Polynesia, Kamtschatka, Thibet, Mexico, and
among the Guanches of the Canary Isles, who are supposed to be the last
representatives of the inhabitants of Atlantis, which sank under the
waters at the close of the Quaternary epoch.
Chamisso, who accompanied Kotzebue in his voyage, describes it as
follows: "In the Caroline Islands, they rest a vertical piece of
roundish wood, terminating in a point, and about a foot and a half in
length and one inch in diameter, upon a second one fixed in the ground,
and then give it a rotary motion by acting with the palms of the
hands. This motion, which is at first slow and measured, is at length
accelerated, while at the same time the pressure becomes stronger,
whereupon the dust from the wood which has formed by friction and
accumulated around the point of the movable piece begins to carbonize.
This dust, which, after a fashion, constitutes a match, soon bursts into
flame. The women of Eap are wonderfully dexterous in their use of this
process."
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--PROCESS EMPLOYED IN NORTH AMERICA FOR PRODUCING
FIRE.]
Fig. 3 shows another manner of obtaining fire by rotation which is
employed by the Guachos, a half savage, pastoral people who inhabit the
pampas of South America. Longitudinal friction must have preceded that
obtained by rotation. It is still in use in most of the islands of
Oceanica (Fig. 4), and especially in Tahiti and in the Sandwich Islands.
In these latter, says again Chamisso, upon the fixed piece of wood they
place another piece of the same kind, about the length of the palm, and
press it obliquely at an angle of about 30 degrees. The extremity that
touches the fixed piece is blunt, and the other extremity is held with
the two hands, the two thumbs downward, in order to allow of a surer
pressure. The piece is given an alternating motion, and in such a way
that it shall always remain in the same plane inclined at an angle of 30
degrees, and form, through friction, a small groove from six to eight
centimeters in length. When the dust thus produced begins to carbonize,
the pressure and velocity are increased. Wood of a homogeneous texture,
neither too hard nor too soft, is the best for the purpose.
The Malays operate as follows: A dry bamboo rod, about a foot in length,
is split longitudinally, and the pith which lines the inside is scraped
off, pressed, and made into a small ball which is afterward placed in
the center of the cavity of one of the halves of the tube. This latter
half is then fixed to the ground in such a way that the cavity and ball
face downward. The operator next fashions the other half of the tube
into a straight cutting instrument like a knife-blade, which he applies
transversely to the fixed half and gives an alternating motion so as to
produce a sort of sawing. After a certain length of time, a groove, and
finally a hole, is produced. The cutting edge of the instrument is then
so hot that it sets on fire the ball with which it has come in contact.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.--GAUCHO OBTAINING FIRE.]
Some peoples, the Fuegians especially, procure fire by striking together
two flints. In the Aleutian Islands these latter, having been previously
covered with sulphur, are struck against each other over a small saucer
of dry moss dusted with sulphur. The Eskimos employ for this purpose
pieces of quartz and iron pyrites.
In the Sandwich Islands recourse is had to a process that necessitates
much skill. There is arranged in a large dry leaf, rolled into the
shape of a funnel, a certain number of flints along with some easily
combustible twigs. On attaching the leaf to the end of a rod, and
revolving the latter rapidly, it is said that fire is produced.
Processes that are based upon the clashing of two flint stones must be
much more inconvenient of application than we would be led to suppose.
We are, in fact, accustomed to see the flint and steel used, but here
the spark is a bit of iron raised to red heat through a mechanical
action that has violently detached it from the mass under the form of
a small sliver. In the case of two flint stones, the light that
is perceived is of an entirely different nature, for it is a
phosphorescence which is produced, even by a very slight friction, not
only between two pieces of silex, but also between two pieces of quartz,
porcelain, or sugar; and that the heat developed is but slight is proved
by the fact that the phenomenon may occur under water. Of course,
fragments of stones may be raised to a red heat through percussion; but
this does not often occur, so for this reason the Fuegians keep up with
the greatest care the fires that they have lighted, and it is this very
peculiarity that has given their country a characteristic aspect and
caused it to be named Terra del Fuego (land of fire). When they change
their residence they always carry with them a few lighted embers which
rest in their canoes upon a bed of pebbles or ashes.
The same thing occurs, moreover, among the Australians and Tasmanians,
who employ, as we have just seen, the rotary process. There are women
among these peoples whose special mission it is to carry day and night
lighted torches or cones made of a substance that burns slowly like
punk. When, through accident, the fire happens to get extinguished in a
tribe, these people often prefer to undertake a long voyage in order to
obtain another light from a neighboring tribe rather than have recourse
to a direct production of it.
We can understand from what is still taking place in these distant
countries why the worship of fire should have existed among our
ancestors, and why sacerdotal associations, such as the Brahmins of
India, the Guebers of Persia, the Vestals of Rome, the priests of Baal
in Chaldea and Phenicia should have been specially instituted for
producing and preserving it.
Plutarch narrates (Numa, chap. ii.) that when the sacred fire happened
to go out, there was employed for relighting it a brass mirror that
had the form of a cone generated by the hypothenuse of an isosceles
rectangular triangle revolving around one of the sides of the right
angle.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.--NATIVE OF OCEANICA OBTAINING FIRE BY FRICTION.]
In a poem upon stones attributed to Orpheus, it is said that the sacred
fire was also lighted by a bit of crystal which concentrated the rays of
the sun upon the material to be inflamed. This process must have been
the one that was most usually employed before fire became common. In
fact, a plano-convex crystal lens has been found among the ruins of
Nineveh. Aristophanes, in the _Clouds_, puts on the stage a coarse
personage named Strepsiades, who points out to Socrates how he must
manage so as not to pay his debts:
"Streps.--Hast thou seen among druggists that beautiful transparent
stone that they employ for lighting a fire?
"Socr.--Thou meanest glass.
"Streps.--Yes.
"Socr.--Well! what wouldst thou do with it?
"Streps.--When the registrar shall have made out his summons against me,
I will take the glass, and, placing myself thus in the sun, will cause
his writing to melt."
As well known, writing was then traced on waxen tablets. Servius (in
_Æn_., xii., 200) affirms that men of ancient times, instead of lighting
fire upon the altar themselves, in their sacrifices, caused it to
descend from heaven. He adds, according to Pliny, Titus Livius, and
several old Latin historians, that Numa, who was initiated into all the
wisdom of Etruria, practiced this art with success, but that Tullius
Hostilius, having desired to repeat the evocation, guided only by the
books of Numa, did not accomplish all the formalities prescribed by the
rite and was struck dead by lightning.
Is it not curious that twenty-four centuries afterward, in 1753,
the physicist Reichman was killed by lightning in trying to repeat
Franklin's experiment? This coincidence, however, is not the only one.
Pliny (ii., 53) recounts that lightning was evoked by King Porsenna at
the time when a monster named _Volta_, who was ravaging the country, was
directing himself toward the capital, Volsinies.
If we return to the Vedas, who had the habit of personifying all
phenomena, we shall find that the fire Agni was the son of the carpenter
who had manufactured the instrument by which it was produced, and of
_Maya_ (magic). He took the name of Akta (anointed, [Greek: christos])
when, nourished by libations of butter, he had acquired his full
development. The Persians attributed likewise to Zoroaster the power
of causing fire to descend from heaven through magic. Saint Clement of
Alexandria (_Recog_., lib. iv.) and Gregory of Tours (_Hist. de Fr._,
i., 5) speak of this. However this may be, the marvelous art was lost
at an early date, for it was at such a date that priests began to have
recourse to tricks that were more or less ingenious for lighting their
sacred fireplaces in an apparently supernatural manner.--_A. De Rochas,
in La Nature_.
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