populous cities, where now the nomadic Arab pitches his tent or wanders
with his flocks, thus showing that relapses of civilization must have
occurred in those particular localities where such phenomena are
observed. But we know also from history that the civilization which
once flourished in those countries did not expire there, but was
transferred thence to other places; that the culture of Assyria and
of Egypt passed into Greece and developed there; that from Greece it
extended to Rome, and in the hands of a new people passed through fresh
phases; that after the destruction of the Roman Empire it lay dormant
for many ages, only to rise again on its original basis, extended
and fertilized by the introduction of fresh blood; that we ourselves
are the inheritors of the same arts, customs, and institutions,
modified and improved; and finally, that civilization, expanding in
all directions, as it continues to move westward, is now in process of
being received back by those ancient countries in which it originated,
in a condition far more varied and diversified than it could ever have
become, had it been confined to a single people or country.
Passing now from the known to the unknown, we come to the study of
prehistoric times, prepared to find that every fresh discovery helps us
to trace backwards the arts of mankind in unbroken continuity towards
their source.
Commencing with the Saxon and the Celt, and passing from these to
the lake dwellers, and on to the inhabitants of caves, races whose
successive periods of existence are determined chiefly by the animals
with which their remains are associated, we find that, according
to their antiquity, they appear to have lived in a lower and lower
condition of culture, until in the drift period, coeval with the
extinct mammoth and the woolly haired rhinoceros, we find the earliest
traces of man, scanty and unsatisfactory though they be, yet sufficient
to show that he must have existed in a state so rude, as to have
devised no better implements than flints pointed at one end, and held
in the hand.
These successive prehistoric stages of civilization have been divided
into the stone, the bronze, and the iron ages of mankind. The evidence
upon which this classification is based, has been so ably set forth
in the works of Sir John Lubbock and others, that I need not refer
to it further than to state that, in my treatment of the origin and
development of the weapons of war, I shall in a great measure follow
the same arrangement. But I shall endeavour to trace the development of
_form_ rather than the _material_ of weapons, and to show by examples
taken from various distinct periods, and especially by illustrations
taken from existing savages, the various agencies which appear to have
operated in causing progression during the earliest ages of mankind.
Of these, the first to be considered is undoubtedly the utilization and
imitation of natural forms. Nature was the only instructor of primaeval
man.
In my previous paper, I discussed this subject at some length, giving
many examples in which the weapons of animals have been employed by
man. But besides these weapons derived from animals, primaeval man must
no doubt at first have employed the natural forms of wood and bone,
and of stones either fractured by the frost, or rolled into convenient
forms upon the seashore.
This principle of the utilization and imitation of natural forms
appears to bear precisely the same relationship to the development of
the arts, that, in the science of language, onomatopoeia has been shown
to bear to the growth and development of articulate speech. In the
attempt to trace language to its origin, onomatopoeia, or the imitation
of the sounds of animals and of nature, appears not only to have been
the chief agent in _initiating_ the growth of language, but it has also
served to enrich it from time to time, so that even to this day, poetry
and eloquence in a great measure depend on the employment of it. But
apart from this, language has had an independent and systematic growth
of its own.
So, in like manner, men not only drew upon nature for their ideas
in the infancy of the arts, but we continue to copy the forms and
contrivances of nature with advantage to this day. But apart from
this, we must look for an independent origin and growth, in which form
succeeded form in regular continuity. Many a lesson has still to be
learnt from the book of nature, the pages of which are sealed to us
until, by the natural growth of knowledge, we acquire the power of
reading and applying them. Imitation therefore, though an important
element in the initiation of the arts, would not alone be sufficient to
account for the phenomenon of progress.
The next principle which we shall have to consider, is that of
variation. Amongst all the products of the most primitive races of man,
we find endless variations in the forms of their implements, all of
the most trivial character. A Sheffield manufacturer informed me, that
he had lately received a wooden model of a dagger-blade from Mogadore,
made by an Arab, who desired to have one of steel made exactly like
it. Accordingly my informant, thinking that he had found a convenient
market for the sale of such weapons, constructed some hundreds of
blades of exactly the same pattern. On arriving at their destination,
however, they were found to be unsaleable. Although precisely of the
type in general use about Mogadore, all of which to the European eye
would be considered alike, their uniformity rendered them unsuited
to the requirements of the inhabitants, each of whom piqued himself
upon possessing his own particular pattern, the peculiarity of which
consisted in having some almost imperceptible difference in the curve
or breadth of the blade.
In the earliest stages of art, men would of necessity be led to the
adoption of such varieties by the constantly differing forms of the
materials in which they worked. The uncertain fractures of flint, the
various curves of the trees out of which they constructed their clubs,
and the different forms of bones, would lead them imperceptibly towards
the adoption of fresh tools. Occasionally some form would be hit upon,
which in the hands of its employer would be found more convenient for
use, and which, by giving the possessor of it some advantage over
his neighbours, would commend itself to general adoption. Thus by a
process, resembling what Mr. Darwin, in his late work, has termed
‘unconscious selection’, rather than by premeditation or design,
men would be led on to improvement. By degrees some forms would be
found best adapted to one pursuit, and some to another; one would
be used for grubbing up roots, another for breaking shells, another
for breaking heads; modes of procedure, accidentally hit upon in one
class of occupation, would suggest improvements in another, and thus
analogy, coming to the aid of accidental variation, would give an
impulse to progress. Thus would commence that ramification of the
arts, occupations, and sciences which, developing simultaneously and
assisting each other, has borne fruit in the civilization of our own
times.
I am aware that it will be found extremely difficult to realize a
condition of human existence so low as that which I am supposing,
and that many persons will deny the possibility of mankind having
ever existed in a condition so helpless as to have been incapable of
designing the simple weapons which we find in the hands of savages
at the present day. It is as difficult to place one’s self in the
position of a being infinitely one’s inferior, as of a being greatly
one’s superior in intellect. ‘Few persons,’ says Professor Max Müller,
‘understand children, still fewer antiquity.’ Our own experience cannot
save us in estimating the powers of either, for, long before the
period of which we have the earliest recollection, we had ourselves
undergone a course of unconscious education in the arts of a civilized
community; our very first utterances were in a language which was in
itself the complex growth of ages, and the improvement of our natural
faculties, resulting from the continued cultivation of our race,
enhances the difficulty we find in appreciating the condition of our
first parents.
Another fertile source of variation arises from errors in successive
copies. At a time when men had no measures or other appliances to
assist them in copying correctly, and were guided only by the eye, an
implement would soon be made to assume a very different appearance. Mr.
Evans has shown in his work on the ‘Coins of the Ancient Britons’ (p.
167) how the head of Medusa, copied originally from a Greek coin, was
made to pass through a series of apparently meaningless hieroglyphics,
in which the original head was quite lost, and was ultimately converted
into a chariot and four. We must not, however, attribute all variation
to this cause, for I quite agree with a remark made by Mr. Rawlinson in
his ‘Five Great Monarchies’, that such varieties are more frequently
noticed in cases where the contrivance is of home growth, than in those
which are derived from strangers.
The third point which we shall have to consider in relation to
continuity, is the retarding element. Under this head, incapacity must
at all times, and especially in the infancy of society, have played the
chief part. But as civilization progressed, other agencies would come
in to influence the same result; prejudice, force of habit, principles
of conservatism in which we have been told by Mr. Mill that all the
dull intellects of the world habitually ensconce themselves, a thousand
interests of a retarding tendency, rise up at the same time as those
having a progressive influence, and prevent our advancing by other than
well-measured paces.
The resultant of these contending forces is continuity. If we could but
put together the missing links; if we could revive contrivances that
have died at their birth, and expose piracies; if we could penetrate
the haze that is so often thrown over continuity by great names,
absorbing to themselves the credit of contrivances that belong to
others, and thereby causing it to appear that progress has advanced
with great strides, where creeping was in reality the order of the day;
we should find that there is not a single work of man’s hand which has
not its history of slow and continuous development, capable of being
traced back, like branches of a tree, to its junction with others,
and so on until the roots of all are found to lie in the simplest
contrivances of primaeval man.
But we must not expect that we shall be able, in the existing state of
knowledge, to trace this continuity from first to last, for the links
that are lost far exceed in number those which remain. The task may
be compared to that of putting together the fragments of a tree that
has been cut up for firewood, and of which the greater part has been
burnt. It is only here and there, after diligent search, that we may
expect to find a few pieces fitting in such a manner as to prove that
they belonged to the same branch. We do not, on that account, abandon
our conviction that the tree once grew, that every large branch was
once a small twig, and that every limb developed by a natural process
into the form in which we find it. The difficulty we have to contend
with is precisely that which the geologist experiences in tracing his
palaeontological sequence. But it is far greater, for natural history
has been long studied, and the materials upon which Mr. Darwin founds
his celebrated hypothesis have been in process of collection for many
generations. But continuity, in relation to the arts, can scarcely
yet be said to be established as a science. The materials for the
science have not yet been even classified, and classification is a
process which must always precede continuity in the study of nature.
Classification defines the margin of our ignorance; continuity results
from the extension of knowledge, by bridging over the distinction
of classes. Travellers, for the most part, have been in the habit
of bringing home, as curiosities, the most remarkable specimens of
weapons and implements, without much regard to their history or the
evidence they convey; and their descriptions of them, as a general
rule, have been extremely meagre. Until quite recently, the curators
of our ethnographical museums have aimed more at the collection of
unique specimens, serving to exhibit well-marked differences of form,
than such as by their resemblance enable us to trace out community
of origin. The arrangement of them has been almost universally bad,
and has been calculated rather to display the several articles to
advantage, on the principle of shop windows, than to facilitate the
deductions of science. The antiquities of savage races, moreover, have
as yet been almost wholly unstudied.
Notwithstanding these difficulties, we are able to catch glimpses of
evidence, here and there, which, when put together systematically, and
when the vestiges of antiquity are illustrated by the implements of
existing savages, will, I trust, be found sufficient to warrant the
principles for which I contend.
_Combination of Tool and Weapon._
In the earliest ages of mankind, when all men were warriors, and before
the division of labour, consequent on civilization, had separated
the arts of peace and war into distinct professions, we must expect
to find the same implement frequently employed in the capacity of
both tool and weapon. Even long after the very earliest ages of which
we have any historical or archaeological record, we often find a
combination of tool and weapon in the same forms, especially amongst
those semi-civilized and savage races of our own times, whom we regard
as the representatives of antiquity. The battles of liberty, from the
age of the Jews and Philistines down to the time of the last Hungarian
revolution, have always been fought by the subject people with weapons
made out of the implements of husbandry. We read in the first of
Samuel, chapter xiii, ‘Now there was no smith found in all the land of
Israel: for the Philistines said, Lest the Hebrews make them swords
or spears: but all the Israelites went down to the Philistines, to
sharpen every man his share’ (the blade of the ploughshare), ‘and his
coulter’ (a kind of knife), ‘and his ax, and his mattock’ (a kind of
pickaxe).... ‘So it came to pass, in the day of battle, that there was
neither sword nor spear found in the hand of any of the people that
were with Saul and Jonathan.’ In the revolts of the German peasantry,
in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the bands of insurgents armed
themselves with threshing flails and scythe blades. In 1794 and 1831,
the Polish peasantry were similarly armed[127]; and it was from such
implements of husbandry that weapons like the military flail, the
bill, and the yataghan, derived their origin. In the recent outbreak
in Jamaica (which, had it not been ably and powerfully put down, would
have led to the destruction of the whole white population) the negroes
armed themselves with weapons of husbandry. In the proclamation of Paul
Bogle, he says: ‘Every one of you must leave your house, take your
guns; who don’t have guns, take cutlasses.’ The cutlasses here referred
to were the implements used for cutting the sugar-cane, sharp on the
concave edge, and are the same which, having been used as weapons by
the negroes in their own country, have continued to be employed by them
ever since. In like manner, we learn from Symes’s ‘Embassy to Ava in
1795’,[128] that the Burmese use the sabre both for warlike purposes,
as well as for cutting bamboos, felling timber, &c.; it is the constant
companion of the inhabitants for all purposes, and they never travel
without it. In Borneo, the peculiar sword-like weapon, called the
‘parangilang’, is used both as a weapon, and also for felling trees,
and the axe of this country is constructed so that, by turning it on
the helve, it can be used either as a weapon or as a carpenter’s axe.
In like manner, the Kaffir axe-blade, by simply altering its position
in the handle, is used either as a weapon, or for tilling the ground.
The North American Indian tomahawk, like the Kaffir axe, is used for
many different purposes; the spear-head of the Kaffir assegai is the
knife that is used for all purposes of manufacture, and Captain Grant
says that the Watusi of East Central Africa make all their baskets with
their spear-heads.[129] The weapons edged with sharks’ teeth, to which
I referred in my former paper, are used in the Marquesas and other of
the South Sea Islands, as much for cutting up fish and carcasses as for
warlike purposes.[130] Dr. Klemm, in his valuable work on savage and
early weapons, describes the wooden pick used by the inhabitants of
New Caledonia both as a weapon, and also for tilling the ground,[131]
and he gives reasons for supposing[132] that in Egypt and many other
parts of the world, the form of the plough was originally derived
from that of the hatchet or hoe, used for tilling purposes. The hoe
used in East Central Africa, which also, like the Kaffir axe, serves
as a medium of exchange in lieu of money, evidently derived its form
from that of a spear or arrow head. The spade, formerly used in this
country, and represented in old pictures, which is still used as a
shovel in Ireland, is a pointed spear-like instrument, and the ‘loy’
or spade still used in all parts of Ireland is hafted exactly in the
same manner as the bronze celt of prehistoric times. Dr. Klemm (l. c.,
p. 119) gives an illustration of an axe used by the Norwegian peasants
both as a tool and weapon. Speke describes the Usoga tribe[133] as
being armed with huge short-handed spears, adapted rather for digging
than for war; and Barth describes the Bornouese troops in Central
Africa digging holes with their spears, and employing them in searching
for water.[134] The Australian ‘dowak’, a kind of club with a flint
attached, combines the purposes of a tool and weapon. We know from the
short sticks upon which the small arrow-heads of quartz found in the
Peruvian tombs are mounted, that they must have been used as knives as
well as for missile purposes. Professor Nilsson says that flint-barbed
arrow-heads, of precisely the same form, are used by the inhabitants
of Tierra del Fuego as knives,[135] and Mr. Stephens, in his travels
in Central America, shows reason for supposing that the large stone
idols in Copan were carved with similar arrow-points,[136] no other
instrument capable of being used for such a purpose having been found
in the neighbourhood.
Examples of this class of evidence might be multiplied _ad infinitum_;
but enough has already been said to afford good grounds for believing
that many of the implements of stone and bronze which are found in the
soil, may have been used for a great variety of purposes, and that,
especially in the earliest stages of culture, we must be careful how we
attribute especial purposes to tools and weapons because they appear
to differ from each other slightly in form. This is more especially so
when, as is almost invariably the case, the several distinct types are
found--when a sufficient number of them are collected and arranged--to
pass almost imperceptibly into each other by connecting links; showing
that the differences observable between any two implements of the same
class, when brought together and contrasted, are rather due to the
operation of a law of variation and development in the fabrication of
the tool itself, than to an intention on the part of the constructor
to adapt it to particular purposes, and that its application to
such especial purposes must have followed, rather than itself have
influenced, the development of the tool.
_Transition from the Drift to the Celt Type._
My first illustration must of necessity be taken from the flint
implements of the drift, the earliest records of human workmanship that
the researches of science have as yet revealed to us. These, to use the
words of Sir Charles Lyell, ‘were probably used as weapons both of war
and the chase, to grub roots, cut down trees, or scoop out canoes.’[137]
I will not attempt during the brief time allotted to me on the present
occasion, any detailed account of the evidence of the antiquity of
these weapons, assuming that the works of Sir Charles Lyell, and Sir
John Lubbock, will have rendered this subject more or less familiar to
most persons at the present day, but I will confine myself to pointing
out the indications of variation and of improvement observable in the
implements themselves.
I have arranged upon diagram No. 1 (Plate XII) a series of specimens of
the same type from nearly every part of the globe.
All the figures given in these diagrams are traced from the implements
themselves, and reduced by photography; they may therefore be regarded
as facsimiles, a point of great importance when our subject has to
deal with the minute gradations of difference observable between them.
Figures 1 to 11 are of the drift type. Casts of the originals of some
of them, and specimens of the implements themselves, are also upon the
table for comparison.
I may here acknowledge the great obligation I am under to Mr. Franks
for the facilities he has afforded me in drawing many of these
specimens in the Christy Collection; to Dr. Watson for a similar
permission in regard to the valuable collection of arms in the India
Museum; and also to Dr. Birch of the British Museum. A large proportion
of my illustrations are taken from the excellent Museum of this
Institution, and others are from my own collection.
Of the drift specimens which I have selected to illustrate the
diagrams, five are from the gravel beds of St. Acheul, in order that
we might have an opportunity of observing the variation in implements
derived from the same locality, and probably belonging to the same or
nearly the same period--chips in fact from the same workshop.
It has been usual to classify these drift implements in two divisions;
the spear-head form, and the oval form. Of the first or spear-head
form, figures 2 to 4 are typical examples; of the oval form, figure
8 is the best illustration. I venture, however, to think that a
distinction more clearly embodying a principle of progress may be made
by dividing them differently, and by placing in the first class those
which are either left rough or rounded at one end and pointed at the
other, of which figures 1 to 7 are examples; and in the second class,
such as are chipped to an edge all round, of which figures 8 to 11 are
types. My reason for preferring this classification to one dependent
on outline is this. The first class having the natural outside coating
of the flint or a roughly rounded surface on one side, appears to be
in every way adapted to be held in the hand; whereas the second class,
of which a beautiful specimen in the Christy Collection from St.
Acheul is represented in a front and side view in figure 10, could not
conveniently be used in the hand as a tool or weapon, without injury to
the hand from the sharp edge with which its periphery is surrounded on
all sides. If, therefore, we see reason for supposing that one class of
implements was employed in handles, whilst the other may have been used
in the hand, I think this constitutes a more important distinction,
and one more obviously implying progress, than a classification which
merely involves a modification of outline, which may have resulted from
no more significant cause than a difference in the form of the flint
nodule out of which the implement was made.[138]
Another important distinction between these drift implements as thus
arranged, arises from the different purposes to which they may have
been put by the fabricators. The first class, figures 1 to 7--it
will be seen by the side view of them--could have been used only as
spears, picks, or daggers, the pointed or small end being employed for
that purpose, whereas the latter class, figures 8 to 11, are equally
available for use as axes with the sharp and broad end. It is quite
possible therefore, that we may see here, in these vestiges of the
first tools of mankind (specimens of all varieties of which are found
in the same beds at St. Acheul), the point of divergence between the
two distinct classes, which must certainly be regarded as the two most
constant and universal weapons of mankind in all ages and countries of
the world, viz. the spear and the axe; the small end developed into the
spear and into all that class of tools for which a point is required;
and from the broad end we obtained the axe and all those tools which
either as chisels, choppers, gouges, or battle-axes, have continued in
use with an endless continuity of development and modification, and
a world-wide history up to the present time. I am aware that in the
St. Acheul implements, as well as in those of similar form from the
laterite beds of Madras, we find occasionally specimens in which the
small end is made broader, as if indicating the gradual development
of an edge on that side, but upon the whole I think the balance of
evidence is in favour of the broad end having originated the axe form.