When dealing with the decorative transformation of artificial objects
I referred (p. 78) to the large axes which are made in some of the
islands in the archipelagoes off the south-east peninsula of New
Guinea, and I pointed out how the desire for a reputation for wealth
appears to have resulted in the production of a useless article, which
took a great deal of time to fabricate.
Mr. H. Balfour[123] gives a parallel example in the case of “the
development of our own civic and state maces. In these the end which
was originally the handle end has now become the ‘clubbed’ end, through
the small crown, which originally embellished the handle, having
gradually developed into the enormous head so characteristic of the
modern ceremonial mace; the two ends have changed places, and the
sometime ‘business’ end is now the smaller.”
[123] H. Balfour, _The Evolution of Decorative Art_, 1893,
p. 73.
An analogous modification often occurs in votive objects. In
prehistoric as well as in recent times objects are dedicated to certain
shrines. Sometimes these may be objects in actual use, but frequently
they are specially made, and in order to increase their value they are
made in some more precious material or with more elaborate workmanship.
For example, votive axes have the blade decorated and even often
perforated, so that it comes to be an elegant fretwork axe-blade,
artistic and valuable but utterly useless for material purposes. This
has happened amongst many peoples and at various times.
But there is also a reverse process which operates in votive offerings,
which may partly be due to the idea that the deities or powers to whom
the offerings are made care more for the idea of offering than for the
object offered, as at a later stage it was recognised that “to obey is
better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams” (1 Samuel
xv. 22). It must, however, be confessed that another consideration has
probably been operative, and that is economy, and it is conceivable
that this motive has led to the reason being assigned that the idea of
the gift, or the essence of the gift, was all that was necessary.
It is superfluous to detail many examples, as the following will
suffice to illustrate this retrograde tendency. It was formerly a
widely-spread custom to sacrifice attendants for the dead. “In the
seventeenth century the practice is described as prevailing in Japan,
where, on the death of a nobleman, from ten to thirty of his servants
put themselves to death. The Japanese form of modern survival of such
funeral sacrifices is the substitute for real men and animals, images
of stone, or clay, or wood, placed by the corpse.[124] The ceremonies
(in China) of providing sedan-bearers and an umbrella-bearer for the
dead, and sending mounted horsemen to announce beforehand his arrival
to the authorities of Hades, although these bearers and messengers are
only made of paper and burnt, seem to represent survivals of a more
murderous reality.”[125] The Chinese, too, on certain occasions make
mock money in paper and then burn it as an offering.
[124] E. B. Taylor, _Primitive Culture_ (2nd ed.), 1873, p. 463.
[125] _Loc. cit._, p. 464.
Associated with wealth is the evolution of money. Money is essentially
a symbol of value; coin is always of less intrinsic worth than its
nominal value, and as money transactions increase the nominal value
bears absolutely no relation to the real value, as in the case of paper
money.
In some parts of British New Guinea we find at the present time a very
interesting intermediate stage between mere barter and the evolution of
money.
I have elsewhere[126] pointed out that there is no money in Torres
Straits; but certain articles have acquired a generally recognised
exchange value. Some of the objects necessitate a considerable amount
of skilled labour; others, such as certain shell ornaments, vary in
value according to the size of the shell, although, of course, the
labour in fabricating a small shell is very little less than that
expended over a large one. I noticed that, as with our precious stones,
a comparatively small increase in size greatly enhances the value. In
the first case it is the labour that gives the value, in the second
it is the rarity. Thus these objects cannot be regarded as money as
they have an intrinsic value. Those most generally employed are the
_dibidibi_, a round polished disc worn on the chest, and formed from
the apex of a large cone shell (_Conus millepunctatus_); the _waiwi_
or _wauri_, a shell armlet formed of a transverse section of the same
shell; a _wap_ or dugong harpoon, a long elegantly shaped instrument
cut out of a tree; a canoe.
[126] A. C. Haddon, “The Ethnography of the Western Tribe of
Torres Straits,” _Jour. Anth. Inst._, xix., 1890.
A good _waiwi_, one which can be worn on the arm of a man, is a very
valued possession, the exchange value is a canoe or a dugong harpoon. I
gathered that ten or twelve _dibidibi_ are considered of equal value to
any of the above. The ornaments vary in size and finish, and the value
varies correspondingly, thus no table of equable exchange can be drawn
up.
A wife was formerly rated at the highest unit of exchange, her value
being a canoe, or a _wap_, or a _waiwi_.
Macgillivray[127] states that in 1849 an iron knife or a glass bottle
(which, when broken into fragments form so many knives) was considered
a sufficient price for a wife. Now the natives usually give trade
articles to their prospective parents-in-law. My friend Maino, the
chief of Tud, informed me that he paid for his wife, who came from
the mainland of New Guinea, a camphor-wood chest containing seven
bolts (_i.e._, pieces) of calico, one dozen shirts, one dozen singlets
(jerseys), one dozen trousers, one dozen handkerchiefs, two dozen
tomahawks, one pound of tobacco, one long fish spear, two fishing
lines, one dozen hooks, and two pearl shells, and he finished up by
saying, “By golly, he too dear!” If the above price was actually paid,
there was some foundation for his exclamation. Once when he sold me
something he particularly demanded a tomahawk in exchange, as he had to
give one to his mother-in-law to “pay” for his last baby, and he did
too. It appears that babies have to be paid for as well.
[127] _Voyage of the “Rattlesnake,”_ 1852.
At the opposite end of British New Guinea, Sir William MacGregor
informs us that at Pannaet (Deboyne Island), in the Louisiades, the
canoes for which this island is famous are cut out with adzes of
hoop-iron, but “they sell the canoes when made at from ten to fifty
stone axes. They do not use the stone axe as a tool in this part of
the country, but it still represents the standard of currency in great
transactions such as the purchase of a canoe, or a pig, or in obtaining
a wife. The natives always carefully explain that, as concerns the
wife, the stone axes are not given as a payment for her, but as a
present to the father of the girl. Steel tomahawks will, however, now
be accepted, at least in some cases, in payment of a canoe, and no
doubt the days of the currency of the stone axe for these and all other
purposes are numbered” (July 1890).[128] In Misima (St. Aignan Island)
also “they have entered the iron age, and appear to have entirely given
up the use of the stone axe except as a medium for purchasing wives”
(October 1888).[129]
[128] _Annual Report of British New Guinea_, C.A. 1, 1892.
p. 66.
[129] _Further Correspondence respecting New Guinea_, 1890, C.
5883, p. 251.
The evolution of the money symbol is a very interesting history, and
I would refer those who would like to inquire further into it to the
masterly work by Professor Ridgeway.[130] In the following brief sketch
of this question I draw largely from that book.
[130] W. Ridgeway, _The Origin of Metallic Currency and Weight
Standards_, 1892.
Among the Bahnars of Annam, who border on Laos, “everything,” says
M. Aymonier, “is by barter, hence all objects of general use have a
known relationship; if we know the unit, all the rest is easy.” After
enumerating certain exchange values, he continues, “1 _muk_ = 10
_mats_, that is to say, ten of those hoes which are manufactured by the
Cedans, and which are employed by all the savages of this region as
their agricultural implement. The hoe is the smallest amount used by
the Bahnars. It is worth 10 centimes in European goods, and is made of
iron.”[131]
[131] _Loc. cit._, p. 23.
“The Chinese likewise used hoes as money; but in the course of time the
hoe became a true currency, and little hoes were employed as coins in
some parts of China” (_tsin_, agricultural implements).[132]
[132] _Loc. cit._, p. 22.
At Ras-el-Fyk, in Dafour, the hoe also serves as currency,[133] and in
West Africa “axes serve as currency; these are too small to be really
employed as an implement, but are doubtless the survival of a period
not long past when real axes served as money.”[134]
[133] _Loc. cit._, p. 45.
[134] _Loc. cit._, p. 40.
At the time when the Chinese made their great invasion into
South-Eastern Asia (214 B.C.), they still were employing a bronze
currency under the form of knives, which were 135 millimetres (5⅖
ins.) in length, bearing on the blade the character _Minh_, and
finished with a ring at the end of the handle for stringing them. Under
the ninth dynasty (479-501 A.D.), they used knives of the same form and
metal, but 180 mm. (7⅕ ins.) in length, furnished with a large ring
at the end of the handle and inscribed with the characters _Tsy Ku’-u
Hoa_. Next the form of the knife was modified, the handle disappeared,
and the ring was attached directly to the blade; but now, as weight was
regarded of importance, its thickness was increased to preserve the
full amount of metal, and the ring became a flat round plate pierced
with a hole for the string.[135] Later on these knives became really a
conventional currency,[136] and for convenience the blade was got rid
of, and all that was now left of the original knife was the ring in
the shape of a round plate pierced with a square hole. This is a brief
history of the _sapec_ (more commonly known to us as _cash_), the only
native coin of China, and which is found everywhere from Malaysia to
Japan.[137]
[135] J. Silvestre, “Notes pour servir à la recherche et au
classement des monnaies et des médailles de Annam et de la
Cochin-Chine Française,” _Excursions et Reconnaissances_, No.
15 (1883), p. 395.
[136] W. S. Ament, “The Ancient Coinage of China,” _American
Journ. Archæol._, iv., 1888, p. 284, Pls. XII., XIII.
[137] H. C. Millies, _Recherches sur les Monnaies des Indigènes
de l’Archipel Indien et de la Péninsule Malaie_, 1871.
“Among the fishermen who dwelt along the shores of the Indian Ocean,
from the Persian Gulf to the southern shores of Hindustan, Ceylon, and
the Maldive Islands, it would appear that the fish-hook, to them the
most important of all implements, passed as currency. In the course of
time it became a true money, just as did the hoe in China. It still
for a time retained its ancient form, but gradually became degraded
into a single piece of double wire. These _larins_, made both of silver
and bronze, were in use until the beginning of the last century, and
bear legends in Arabic character. Had the process of degradation gone
on without check, in course of time the double wire would probably
have shrunk up into a bullet-shaped mass of metal, just as the Siamese
silver coins are the outcome of a process of degradation from a piece
of silver wire twisted into the form of a ring and doubled up, which
probably originally formed some kind of ornament. The bullet-shaped
_tical_ is now struck as a coin of European form. Just as, perhaps,
the silver shells of Burmah became the multiple unit of a large number
of real cowries, so the fish-hook made of real silver came into use
as a multiple unit, when the bronze fish-hook had already become
conventionalised into a true coin.”[138]
[138] W. Ridgeway, _The Origin of Metallic Currency and Weight
Standards_, 1892, p. 27.
“Every medium of exchange either has an actual marketable value, or
represents something which either has, or formerly had, such a value
just as a five-pound note represents five sovereigns, and the piece
of stamped walrus skin, formerly employed by Russians in Alaska in
paying the native trappers, represented roubles or blankets. This is an
interesting parallel to the ancient tradition that the Carthaginians
employed leather money” (p. 47).
To employ the language of geology, we have found evidence pointing to
certain general laws of stratification. In Further Asia we have found
a section which presents us with an almost complete series of strata,
whilst in other places where we have been only able to observe two
or three layers, we have nevertheless found that certain strata are
invariably found superimposed upon others just as regularly as the coal
seams are found lying over the carboniferous limestone. As soon as the
primitive savage has conceived the idea of obtaining some article which
he desires but does not possess, by giving in exchange to its owner
something which the latter desires, the principle of money has been
conceived.
Shells or necklaces of shells are found everywhere to be employed in
the earliest stages. When some men began to make weapons of superior
material, as for instance, axes of jade instead of common stone, such
weapons naturally soon became media of exchange; when the ox and the
sheep, the swine and the goat are tamed, large additions are made to
the circulating media of the more advanced communities; then come
the metals; the older ornaments of shells and implements of stone are
replaced by those of gold (and much later by silver), and by weapons of
bronze as in Asia and Europe, and by those of iron in Africa.
Copper and iron circulate either in the form of implements and weapons,
such as the axes of West Africa, the hoes of the early Chinese and
modern Bahnars, and the ancient Chinese knives, all of which remind
us of the axes and half-axes in Homer; or in the form of rings and
bracelets, like the manillas of West Africa and the ancient Irish
fibulæ, or else in the form of plates or bars of metal, ready to be
employed for the manufacture of such articles, as in the case of the
iron bars of Laos, the iron discs of the Madis, and the brass rods
of the Congo. Again, we are reminded of the mass of pig-iron which
Achilles offered as a prize.
It is of the highest importance to observe that such pieces of copper
and iron are not weighed, but are appraised by measurement. We shall
find that it is only at a period long subsequent to the weighing of
gold that the inferior metals are estimated by weight.
The custom of capturing wives, which prevails among the lowest
savages, is succeeded by the custom of purchasing wives. The woman is
only a chattel on the same footing as the cow or the sheep, and she
is accordingly appraised in terms of the ordinary media of exchange
employed in her community, whether it be in cows, horses, beads, skins,
or blankets. Presently male captives are found useful both to tend
flocks, and, as in the East and in the modern Soudan, to guard the
harem.
With the discovery of gold, ornaments made at first out of the rough
nuggets supersede other ornaments, and presently either such ornaments
or portions of gold in plates or lumps are added to the list of media,
and the same follows with the discovery of silver. Such ornaments or
pieces of gold and silver are estimated in terms of cattle, and the
standard unit of the bars or ingots naturally is adjusted to the unit
by which it is appraised. Thus we find the Homeric talent, the silver
bar of Annam, the Irish _unga_ all equated to the cow, and the Welsh
_libra_, Anglo-Saxon _libra_, similarly equated to the slave.
With the discovery of the art of weaving, cloths of a definite size
everywhere become a medium, as the silk cloth of ancient China, the
woollen cloths of the old Norsemen, the _toukkiyeh_ of the Soudan, and
the blanket of North America. This fact once more recalls Homer and
makes us believe that the robes and blankets and coverlets which Priam
brought along with the talents of gold to be the ransom of Hector’s
body, all had a definite place in the Homeric monetary system.
“We have seen the Siamese piece of twisted silver wire passing into a
coin of European style, and the Chinese bronze knife ending by becoming
_cash_, just as the Homeric talent of gold appears, in weight at least,
as the gold stater of historical times. Thus in every point the analogy
between what we find in the Homeric Poems and in modern barbarous
communities seems complete.
“We may therefore with some confidence assume that we are at liberty
to fill up the gaps in the strata of Greek monetary history which lie
between Homer and the beginning of coined money on the analogy of the
corresponding strata in other regions. This assumption, resting on
a broad basis of induction and confirmed by a good deal of evidence
special to Greece and Italy, will be found to explain the origin, not
only of weight standards in those countries, but of the types on the
oldest coins, such as the cow’s head of Samos, the tunny fish of Olbia
and Cyzicus, the axe of Tenedos, the tortoise of Aegina, the shield of
Bœotia, and the silphium of Cyrene” (pp. 49, 50).
Professor Ridgeway’s view is that while mythological and religious
subjects do occur on Greek coins, it can be shown that certain coins,
even in historical times, were regarded as the representations of the
objects of barter of more primitive times.
The tunny fish continually passes in vast shoals through the sea of
Marmora from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. A representation of
this fish appears invariably on the electrum coins of Cyzicus. “We know
that the articles which form the staple commodities of a community in
the age of barter virtually form its money. In a city like Cyzicus,
whose citizens depended for their wealth on their fisheries and trade,
rather than on flocks and herds and agriculture, the tunny fish singly
or in certain defined numbers, as by the score or hundred and the like,
would naturally form a chief monetary unit, just as the stock-fish
(dried cod) were employed in mediæval Iceland. Are we not then
justified in considering the tunny fish, which forms the invariable
adjunct of the coins of Cyzicus, as an indication that these coins
superseded a primitive system in which the tunny formed a monetary
unit, just as the kettle and pot countermarks on the coins of Crete
point back to the days when real kettles formed the chief medium of
exchange?
“But far stronger evidence is at hand to show that the tunny fish was
used as a monetary unit in some parts of Hellas. The city of Olbia,
which lay on the north shore of the Black Sea, was a Milesian colony,
and was the chief Greek emporium in this region. There are bronze
coins of this city made in the shape of fishes and inscribed ΘΥ,
which has been identified as the abbreviation of θύννος, _tunny_.
When we recall the Chinese bronze cowries, the Burmese silver shells,
the silver fish-hooks of the Indian Ocean, etc., we are constrained to
believe that in those coins of Olbia, shaped like a fish, we have a
distinct proof of the influence on the Greek mind of the same principle
which has impelled other peoples to imitate in metal the older object
of barter which a metal currency is replacing. The inhabitants of Olbia
were largely intermixed with the surrounding barbarians, and may
therefore have felt some difficulty in replacing their barter unit by
a round piece of metal bearing merely the imprint of a fish, while the
pure-blooded Greek of Cyzicus had no hesitation in mentally bridging
the gulf between a real fish and a piece of metal merely stamped with
a fish, and did not require the intermediate step of first shaping his
metal unit into the form of a tunny.
The island of Tenedos, lying off the Troad, struck at a very early
date silver coins bearing for device a double-headed axe. Pausanias,
in the second century A.D., saw at Delphi axes dedicated by Periclytus
of Tenedos. It is probable, according to Professor Ridgeway, that such
double axes as those stamped on the coins of Tenedos formed part of the
earliest Greek system of currency. The prizes offered in the funeral
games of Patroclus are of course merely the usual objects of barter and
currency, slavewomen, oxen, tripods, talents of gold, and the like.
“But he (Achilles) set for the archers dark iron, and he set down ten
axes and ten half-axes;”[139] that is, ten double and ten single-headed
axes. That such axes were evidently an important article in Tenedos is
proved by the dedication at Delphi, and may not the axe on their coins
represent the local unit of an earlier epoch?
[139] “Ten double-headed axes he set and ten single,” in the
translation by E. Meyers. _The Iliad of Homer_, xxiii. 850
(Macmillan & Co.), 1883.
The “tortoise” on the coins of Aegina has been mythologised as an
emblem of Aphrodite, but the connection is not very intimate. According
to a fragment of Ephorus, the Aeginetans took to commerce on account
of the barrenness of their island. But they must have had something
to give in exchange to the people before they could have developed a
carrying trade, and Professor Ridgeway suggests that the tortoise on
the coins of Aegina simply indicates that the old monetary unit of
that island was the shell of the turtle (“tortoise-shell”), which was
considerably larger, and therefore more valuable for making bowls than
that of the land or mountain tortoise. The earliest coins represent a
turtle, for the feet are flippers quite distinct from the legs of the
later tortoises; also the thirteen plates of the dorsal shield, or
carapace, are not so distinct in the turtle as in the tortoise, and in
the older coins these plates are not represented. The earliest coins,
too, have the incuse on the reverse divided into eight triangular
compartments, which may indicate the eight plates of the ventral
shield, or plastron, of all these animals.
The same line of argument applies to the Bœotian shield, which has been
confidently pronounced to be a sacred emblem, but which we must now
regard as a numismatic symbol of a real shield. On the reverse of these
coins the incuse forms a rude =X=, bounded by a circle of dots, which
probably represents the back of the shield, as the frame of an ox-hide
shield consists of a circular rod with two crossbars.
“The idea of making the incuse represent the other side of the object
given in relief on the obverse seems to be just the stage between a
complete representation of the object, as in the tunny of Olbia, and
that evinced by the early coins of Magna Græcia, on which the reverse
gives in the incuse exactly the same form as that in relief on the
obverse.”
The silphium plant of Cyrene, which yielded a salubrious but somewhat
unpleasant medicine, has also been held to have a mythological
symbolism, and without any evidence it has been foisted on to the
hero Aristacus, “the protector of the corn-field and the vine and all
growing crops, and bees and flocks and shepherds, and the averter of
the scorching blasts of the Sahara.” “It seems far more reasonable
to treat it on the same principle as the others just discussed. The
silphium formed the most important article produced in that region, and
it is perfectly in accordance with all analogy that certain quantities
of this plant, and of the juice extracted from it, should be employed
as money. At the present moment tea is so employed on the borders of
Tibet and China, and raw cotton in Darfur.”
Professor Ridgeway argues that the same holds good for representations
of cattle on coins—the image of the cow or the ox indicates that the
gold piece so marked is a substitute for that animal.
These researches of Professor Ridgeway’s have thrown a new light on
some of the images on Greek coins. He has transferred the symbolism
of this class of coinage from the domain of religion to that of
merchandise—from god to mammon.[140]
[140] Prof. D’Arcy W. Thompson, jun., has published a paper
(“On Bird and Beast in Ancient Symbolism,” _Trans. Roy. Soc.
Edinb._, xxxviii. pt.i., 1895, p. 179), in which he combats
Prof. Ridgeway’s theory, as being foreign to all we know of
ancient symbolism. “We must see fallacy in any theory which
treats as nascent and primitive the civilisation of a period of
exalted poetry, the offspring of ages of antecedent culture;
which sees but a small advance on recent barbarism in ways of
life simple in some respects, but rich in developed art and
stored with refined tradition; that looks only for the ways
and habits and thoughts of primitive man in races supported
by a background of philosophical and scientific culture of an
unfathomed, and may be unfathomable, antiquity. Behind early
Hellenic civilisation was all the wisdom of Egypt and the East,
and the first Greeks of whom we have knowledge looked upon the
old Heaven and the old Earth not with the half-open, wondering
eyes of wakening intelligence, but with perceptions trained
in an ancient inheritance of accumulated learning. “I print
this extract, as I consider that D’Arcy Thompson’s reminder is
needed in the present search after origins. With regard to the
point at issue, it appears to me that both may be right. Some
of the representations on Greek coins may have the significance
which Ridgeway ascribes to them, while others may bear the
interpretation given by D’Arcy Thompson, whose theory I shall
refer to later.