characteristic part abbreviation up to this point in a nutshell. It is
the smallest unmistakable readily recognized and nonduplicable part. It
is important for individual record that it should not be possible to
collect two bounties on one wolf or to boast of two fish caught or two
dead enemies, where there has been but one.
It is thus not fancy or jest to say the scalp belt of an American Indian
chief (albeit this did not play such a part in the Indian world as is
commonly imagined), or the tiger-tooth necklace of the African chief, is
a collection of records representing a rather advanced stage of
evolution.
Abbreviations in the case of sample records may be carried one step
farther still, for a single eagle’s feather or a very small piece of fur
shows kind just as well as a head or tail or a whole skin.
Perhaps the best examples of collections of record objects in the most
abbreviated forms are, for individual records, the collections of
trophies worn on the person, and for specimen records the medicine bag
of West Africa.
Individual trophy collections are common to all primitive peoples and
everywhere tended towards abbreviated trophies which could be worn. It
would be more than rash to trace the use of clothing and all personal
adornment to the wearing of trophies as there is some slight temptation
to do, but trophy necklaces, feather bonnets, and the like, were
certainly worn in many tribes and without very much other clothing,
either of protective or ornamental character. The leopard’s tooth
necklace of the African chief, recording the number of leopards slain by
his tribe, and the feather bonnet of the American Indian, are true
record collections. In general all objects of personal adornment among
primitive peoples are symbolic, that is, they have meaning and are of
the nature of writing. They are kept for record rather than as objects
of beauty or for the enhancement of personal beauty. Labrets, for
example, are a sign of aristocratic birth, and even if the objects worn
are ritual rather than trophy in character, still each one has its
symbolic meaning, and the expert may read in each collection a tale of
events or of specific religious ideas almost as clearly as in the
phonetic words of a printed book.
The West African medicine bag, like other medicine bags, contained a
collection of so called fetish objects of all sorts—bits of fur,
feathers, claws, hair, twigs, bark, etc., etc.—but the use of these
objects was not for medicine or magical purposes as commonly understood.
They formed obviously an object record collection quite in the nature of
a collection of books. As each object was drawn out of the bag, the
keeper of the bag recited some appropriate tale or formula for which the
object stood.
This probably casts light on many other so-called fetish collections of
primitive people, as for example those of the North American Indians.
“Mooney says, in describing the fetish, that it may be a bone, a
feather, a carved or painted stick, a stone arrowhead, a curious fossil
or concretion, a tuft of hair, a necklace of red berries, the stuffed
skin of a lizard, the dried hand of an enemy, a small bag of pounded
charcoal mixed with human blood—anything, in fact ... no matter how
uncouth or unaccountable, provided it be easily portable and attachable.
The fetish might be ... even a trophy taken from a slain enemy, or a
bird, animal, or reptile.” (Hodge. HandbAmInd 1:458.)
These fetishes might be kept in the medicine sack (the Chippewa
pindikosan) or “It might be fastened to the scalp-lock as a pendant,
attached to some part of the dress, hung from the bridle bit, concealed
between the covers of a shield, or guarded in a special repository in
the dwelling. Mothers sometimes tied the fetish to the child’s cradle.”
(Hodge. HandbAmInd 1:458.)
These fetishes represent not only events but ideas (a vision, a dream, a
thought, or an action). They represent not only religious and
mythological ideas and tribal records, but individual exploits in war or
hunting and other individual records. In short, the medicine bag the
world over is a collection of recorded ideas, both of historical and
mythological character if not also of an economic character.
So far as the “fetish” objects are not trophy objects, but stand for
ideas, they form a transition to the mnemonic object, but so long as the
object is such as to suggest to the keeper and expounder the idea of the
particular form of words or ideas which he relates, it is still to be
counted as object rather than mnemonic writing e.g. if a bit of fox fur
suggests a story of a fox, it is still to be counted a pictorial object
rather than a mnemonic object.
If twenty eagle feathers, e.g. stand for twenty eagles, or twenty small
bits of fur for twenty reindeer, these sample objects are still used
pictorially, but if a feather head-dress is made of eagle’s feathers,
each feather symbolizing some particular exploit, the matter has passed
over from the pictorial to the mnemonic stage.
§ 14. _Mnemonic object libraries_
Mnemonic writing, as it is generally treated in the textbooks, includes
all sorts of simple memory aids, and is generally, and probably rightly,
regarded by writers of palaeography as preceding picture writing,
although there is an element of abstractness even in the tally or
knotted cord or pebble as compared with the actual imitation or
representation of the picture, and in the evolution of human thinking,
other things being equal, the abstract necessarily follows the concrete
in time and in the order of evolution.
The most familiar examples of mnemonic books are the quipus or knotted
cord books, the notch books, which include tallies and message sticks,
the wampum belts of American Indians, and the abacus. Collections of any
of these kept in the medicine tent or temple, or even the counting
house, are, of course, true libraries, or at least true collections of
written documents as generally understood by the historians of writing.
The knotted cord is best known under the name of quipu, which was the
name for the Peruvian knot record. At bottom the idea does not differ
from the simple tying of knots in a handkerchief as a reminder, or the
sailor’s log line. It has been most commonly used for numerical records,
but in many cases it preserved and transmitted very extensive historical
records. One very simple use was the noting on different colored cords
by knots the number of the different animals taken to market for sale,
and again the price received for these at market.
It is still used among the Indians of Peru and some North American
Indians, also in Hawaii and among various African tribes, and all over
Eastern Asia and the Pacific.
It was the traditional method in China before the use of written
characters, and the written characters themselves were, it is alleged,
made up out of these combined with the pictures of bird tracks.
Among the ancient civilizations there are many remains or reminiscences
of these knot books. They are found among the ancient Egyptian
hieroglyphics (as in the sign for amulet and perhaps in several other
signs); they appear also in the mnemonic knotted fringes to garments in
the Jewish antiquities and, as Herodotus tells us, Darius made use of
such knots to guide certain Ionians who remained behind to guard a
bridge as to when it should be time for them to sail away. In 1680 the
Pueblo Indians of North America marked the days to their uprising in the
same way.
This use of the knotted cord for amulets is among the most widespread of
uses, being found among the medicine men of nearly all primitive
peoples. Juno wore such an amulet, and Ulysses carried one.
Among the ancient Peruvians and Mexicans there were many collections of
quipus in charge of official recorders.
Traces of ancient use survive in the knots of a cardinal’s hat and
perhaps most interestingly of all in the nautical knot used in casting
the log or sounding. We may still travel so many knots an hour or sink
mayhap so many fathoms deep. The knotted measuring line with fathom
marks is probably the direct historical descendant of the Egyptian
measuring line and by the same token probably of the Egyptian sign for
one hundred, the fathom like one of the Egyptian units being at bottom
the stretch of a man’s arm.
[Illustration:
A COLLECTION OF MESSAGE STICKS
FROM HOWITT. NATIVE TRIBES OF S. E. AUSTRALIA,
p. 704
]
Most of the extant quipus have been found in graves. There is a “very
extensive collection” of these in the American Museum of Natural History
in New York, and a recent study of these (by L. L. Locke) concludes that
they were used purely for numerical purposes and not for counting but
for record keeping.
The best known notch books are the message sticks used in Australia and
Africa and the tally used in the British Exchequer up to a recent date
for the keeping of accounts. This is the method, famous in fiction for
the recording on their knife-hilts by Indians and superhuman white
scouts of the number of scalps taken in war. It is the essence of the
so-called Clog Almanac, the nick-stick, and other ways of notching up
accounts still often found in rural communities. The memory of it
survives in the use of the word score or so many tallies, used until
recently of the runs made in baseball.
Collections of notch records are found at least among the Australian
aborigines—and it will be remembered that it was the burning of the huge
collection of tallies in the early part of the last century which
resulted in the setting fire to and burning up of the parliament houses.
It is possible that the notch method was preceded by a system of
stripping off leaves or twigs from a branch, leaving a certain number.
The early pictures of Seshait, goddess of writing among the Egyptians,
who records the years of a king’s reign, suggests possibly this method,
and in this case perhaps also the Egyptian sign for year with its single
projection may refer to this method.
Wampum is one of the best known and most picturesque forms of mnemonic
object writing. It was used by the American Indians for treaties, title
deeds, memorials of events, etc., and considerable collections of these
tribal records were not uncommon. Although in itself a later and more
complex style, in essence it stands for a style still older than the
knot writing which it resembles. Existing examples of wampum leave the
simple mnemonic knot or notch far behind and have progressed even to
figures or pictures often of an advanced or symbolic type, made in the
beads, but the beads themselves stand for what may perhaps be the very
earliest form of mnemonic record—that is the object record where each
object is represented not by a pictorial object but by some sample
object like a pebble or a twig. The heap of pebbles used for counting
was possibly the very earliest mnemonic record.
An extremely interesting modern example of calculation in pebbles and
the representation by them even of sums in addition, multiplication, and
subtraction, turns up among the psychological investigations in the
matter of mathematical prodigies. It appears that most of the famous
lightning calculators have been the children of peasants, and a large
part of these Italian shepherd boys, who apparently used pebbles for the
counting of their sheep and amused themselves by making a plaything of
these. Other lightning calculators (Ampère e.g.) used pebbles, and
Bidder a bag of shot, while others have taught themselves by the use of
marbles, peas, or the use of their fingers. (Bruce in McClure v. 39,
1912, pp. 593-4.) The counting by pebble heaps is found indeed generally
in the playing of children. When it comes to transporting or making more
permanent collections this was done by means of a pouch in the case of
pebbles—one of the earliest forms of record holder and one of the most
ancient forms even of phonetic writings, or tying together in bundles as
in the case of twig bundles found among primitive peoples, or by
stringing together as in trophy necklaces or some forms of the abacus.
[Illustration:
A COLLECTION OF WAMPUM
AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, N. Y.
Nos. 150.1/1945, 1579 A.D. 50/2287, 2902
]
With these mnemonic object writings is perhaps also to be classed the
symbols formed with bits of wood used in the Indian game of cañute
described by J. P. Harrington. “The San Ildefonso cañute figures present
a symbolism so highly conventionalized and so complex that the term
language might well be applied—a symbolism not essentially different in
origin or practice from human speech, gesture language, African drum
language, conventionalized graphic designs that have a commonly
understood meaning, or writing whether executed in pictograms,
ideograms, phonograms, or phonetic symbols” (AmAnthropol n.s. 14, 1912,
p. 265). “These figures are, it is said, made much in the same fashion
as children graphically represent certain ideas by arranging small
objects.”
§ 15. _Picture book libraries_
Savage tribes in general have not progressed beyond the image stage of
writing or at most beyond a sort of syllabic stage which corresponds to
what we know as the rebus. This picture writing is the known origin
however of all the oldest historical writing systems. As we all know,
children too read their picture books long before they read print or
writing. Picture writing and picture books have always survived among
cultured nations and have a great vogue to-day, especially through the
introduction of pictures into newspapers and through moving pictures.
The earliest existing picture writing of the Stone Age includes many
images of domestic animals in the caves of the Pyrenees with apparently
conventional signs sometimes accompanying them. Prehistoric picture
writing in the Mediterranean regions includes also pottery marks,
figures of animals or parts of animals used to distinguish ships and
having their modern counterpart in the ship’s figurehead, also the
seals, milk-stones of Crete, the rock carvings of Liguria and the like.
The very first beginnings of picture writing are perhaps to be found in
natural object images. The Chinese ascribed the origin of their written
characters to bird tracks, and many primitive peoples used stones which
accidentally resembled animals as images of them.
Perhaps the most natural and earliest reading of records is the reading
of footprints of hunted birds and animals. From these tracks the expert
woodsman may read the kind and number of individuals passing, the
direction that they are taking, and many other details. This fact is
familiar with all hunting, and it is famous in the trailing of both men
and animals by American Indians and by primitive people generally. The
method is still much used in the tracking of criminals by footprints,
and more especially and scientifically in these days by finger-print
records. These records are actual images of parts of individuals, and it
is not incredible, even if not evidenced, that the earliest use of
writing by the Chinese should have been the imitation of birds’ tracks
in clay by some hunter in order to describe the kind of birds that he
had seen.
It has been mentioned at various points in this paper that the record of
number is near, if not at, the beginning of permanent records, and Gow,
in his History of Greek mathematics, has a theory that the record of
numbers above ten began by impressing the ten fingers in the moist
earth.
[Illustration:
RECORD ORNAMENT OF IMITATION LEOPARD TEETH
FROM FROBENIUS. CHILDHOOD OF MAN, p. 27
]
Another very early form was the natural rock having some accidental
resemblance to bird or beast, or else formed by very slight chipping of
a natural image, as in some cases in the Pyrenean caves. Various
American Indian tribes used natural fossils or accidental images in this
way. The transition from a slight chipping to sculpture is, of course,
an easy one.
Perhaps the simplest and most natural transition from pictorial object
to image writing is suggested by the trophy records of an African chief
as described by Frobenius. The actual record trophies of leopard
hunting—the leopard’s teeth—are taken and worn in a necklace by the
chief and form a tribal record. The individual making the killing has,
however, a wooden model of the tooth which he wears as an individual
trophy. This very simple and natural proceeding has in it the germ of
picture writing,—is indeed picture writing.
Among the more primitive forms of picture writing are tattooing and body
painting. Tattooing is used among many savage tribes to-day and all over
the world. This was known in the most ancient times and is often
practised to-day especially by sailors and boys, sometimes quite
elaborately. Among the savage tribes it was used for religious,
political, and economic purposes. One use was as identification mark.
This might be a tribal mark or individual mark, and in either case is
very closely connected with the totem idea. In either case it might also
be used, and was used, as a property or ownership mark to which the
tattoo mark corresponded. This is perhaps linked with the ancient
Egyptian tattooing through the tribal mark of the modern Nubian.
The war paint of the American Indian is as old as the Stone Age in the
Mediterranean and is made most curiously interesting by a considerable
number of so called Pintadores still existent. These Pintadores form the
earliest known step in the history of printing, for they consist of
stamps with which the paint could be applied in various figures after
the fashion of the modern rubber stamp. These figures, like the war
paint of the American Indians, probably had various symbolic meanings
according to the figures and the colors used, and it is not beyond the
bounds of possibility that there were libraries of printed books in this
Stone Age—if by any chance collections of sample impressions from these
stamps were kept for any purpose. At any event, when applied they formed
what some people would call a living library. Certain tablets possibly
used for a similar purpose have been found also among the North American
Indians.
Body and face painting naturally preceded tattooing—the latter being
simply a method of making the record permanent. The methods may or may
not have arisen from the marks made by the pressure of trophy necklaces,
bracelets, etc., on the skin, or from being etched by the sun on the
unprotected skin of light complexioned tribes. However they may have
arisen, these two methods of skin marking are among the very early forms
of record, were often used to record exploits or events, and sometimes
to record an extraordinary number and variety of matters. It seems also
to be established that these body pictures were sometimes intended as
copies of trophy necklaces or other ornaments.
There are many ways beside skin marks in which the idea of image making
might have suggested itself to primitive man, inheriting as he perhaps
did from an animal ancestry a strong instinct for imitation—the shadow,
reflection in water, actual fossils of animals, the etching of sunburn,
the silhouette of a tree or animal against the horizon, natural stone
forms, tracks in clay, etc.—but in skin marks, natural or artificial, we
see the transition process in actual operation.
[Illustration:
TUPAI CUPA’S TATTOO MARKS, SHOWING A GROUP
OF VARIOUS RECORDS
FROM PARSON’S STORY OF NEW ZEALAND, p. 16
]
The fact that savages, when they took off their detachable ornaments to
go to war or for ritual dances and the like, put on paint, suggests
possibly that the painted forms are images of the things removed.
Primitive picture writing on other materials than human skin is found
all over the world. It may be drawn, painted, engraved, chiseled,
modeled, moulded, woven or inlaid. The petroglyphs or aboriginal rock
carvings (more often engravings) and the paintings are the most typical
kinds although perhaps not the most common. Both of these kinds are
found all over the world; most famously perhaps among the Australians,
the Bushmen and the North American Indians. The use by the North
American Indians is said to have reached its highest development among
the Kiowa and the Dakota tribes in their calendars. “These calendars are
painted on deer, antelope, and buffalo hides, and constituted a
chronology of past years. The Dakota calendars have a picture for each
year ... while that of the Kiowa has a summer symbol and a winter
symbol, with a picture or device representing some noteworthy event”
(Hodge). It is said of the petroglyphs that they “record personal
achievements and happenings more frequently than tribal histories ...
are known often to be the records of the visits of individuals to
certain places, signposts to indicate the presence of water or the
direction of a trail, to give warning or to convey a message ... and
many of them ... [are] connected with myths, rituals, and religious
practices” (Hodge). “Sometimes a man painted his robe in accordance with
a dream, or pictured upon it a yearly record of his own deeds or of the
prominent events of the tribe.” “The horses of warriors were often
painted to indicate the dreams of the war experiences of their riders.”
[Illustration:
PICTURE WRITING. LONE DOG’S WINTER COUNT.
SERIES OF VARIOUS RECORDS
FROM MALLERY (1882-3) pl. vi
]
In the matter of abbreviation it was in image writing as in object
writing. It begins with whole object images and passes through various
stages of abbreviation until it goes over from the pictorial to the
mnemonic stage.
In image writing this process has many illustrations running back to the
cave drawings where the head or horns of an ox or goat are given instead
of the whole animal. This convention was used over the whole
Mediterranean region and apparently became the direct ancestor of the
Hebrew aleph, the Greek alpha, and our modern English a. The letter a as
now used in the alphabet appears to be the end of a long historical
process of conventionalizing by which user after user has tried to
simplify the strokes required more and more or, as the modern complacent
“inventors” of the ancient principles which they now call “efficiency”
would say, “reduce the motions required” until the present form has been
reached.
In image writing too is more clearly seen the development of what may be
called sample-and-number abbreviation.
The earliest way of representing several animals seems to have been the
making several like symbols—one for each. Five oxen, e.g. are expressed
by five pictures. It is entirely natural that when a man is writing the
same picture several times, one after another, and knows that others
will know it to be a repetition, the process of conventionalizing, which
goes on so fast under ordinary circumstances, should go even faster,
until pictures four and five become simple scrawls and in the course of
time the whole is reduced to practically a single picture and four
straight lines. Here we have the individual record and the sample record
combined.
True picture writing is not very common on the ancient monuments and is
chiefly to be studied in the primitive writings of uncivilized tribes
such as the Bushmen and the North American Indians. There are, however,
both in the Assyrian and Egyptian hieroglyphics many traces of the older
pictures from which these are derived and the idea of the picture
writing is seen in great fullness in the determinatives of the Egyptian
writing, although it is likely that these are not so much remains as
restorations. They consist, as is well known, of pictures which suggest
something of the meaning of the word, e.g. all words related to writing
are followed by the pictures of the scribe’s palette, with pen and ink
moistener. This suggests at once that the word has something to do with
writing. It is likely that the attaching of these to phonetic signs was
the result of finding that there were so many words which had the same
sounds.