THE BEGINNINGS OF THE ALPHABET
We may, without further preface, advance to our main purpose, which is
to supply an account of the stages through which the alphabets of the
civilised world passed before they reached their, practically, final
form. Here, as in aught else that the wit of man has devised and the
cunning of his hand applied, the law of development is seen at work. In
the quest for traces of any fundamental differences between him and the
animals to which he stands in nearest physical and psychical relation,
he has been variously described as tool-maker, fire-maker, possessor
of articulate speech, and so forth; but the further that observation
and comparison have been made, the more apparent has it become that
those differences are of degree and not of kind. Some evidence in
support of this has been already summarised in previous volumes of
this series; and here it suffices to say that it is in the inventive
arts, as _e.g._ the production of fire, of the mode of which nature
supplied the hints, and the making of pictorial signs, in which the
mimetic instinct, shared by some of the lower animals, comes into play,
that, restricting the comparison to things material, man appears upon
a higher plane. But this has been reached by processes of development
involving no break in the continuity of things.
In this "story" we start with man as sign-maker. His prehistoric
remains supply evidence of artistic capacity in a remote past, and set
before us in vigorous, rapid outline what his life and surroundings
must have been. On fragments of bone, horn, schist, and other
materials, the savage hunter of the Reindeer Period, using a pointed
flint flake, depicted alike himself and the wild animals which he
pursued. From cavern-floors of France, Belgium, and other parts of
Western Europe, whose deposits date from the old Stone Age, there have
been unearthed rude etchings of naked, hardy men brandishing spears at
wild horses, or creeping along the ground to hurl their weapons at the
urus, or wild ox, or at the woolly-haired elephant. A portrait of this
last named, showing the creature's shaggy ears, long hair, and upwardly
curved tusks, its feet being hidden in the surrounding high grass, is
one of the most famous examples of palæolithic art.
Here let us pause to say that the apparent absence of other indications
of man's presence, showing passage from lower to higher stages of
culture, led to the assumption that vast gaps have occurred in his
occupancy of north-western and other parts of Europe. The theory of
absolute disconnection between the Old Stone Age and the Newer Stone
Age long held the field, but it has disappeared before the evidence
against tenantless intervals of areas in prehistoric times. And so
with succeeding periods. There is no warrant for assuming entire
effacement of one race, with resulting clear field for the immigration
of another race; and modern archæological research is producing the
links which connect the rude art of Northern with that of Southern
Europe, and, what will be shown to be of great moment, with that of
the Eastern Mediterranean. The examples of this must remain rare,
since only pictographs on some durable material, or specimens of the
fictile art, would survive the action of time. But, happily, if they
are infrequent, they are widely distributed. For to those yielded by
the bone-caverns already referred to are to be added rock-carvings in
Denmark, and figures on limestone cliffs of the Maritime Alps; there
are curious graphic signs, suggestive to some eyes of a primitive
script, in the Marz d'Azil cave; while still more interesting are the
animal and fylfot or swastika-like figures (the swastika is a solar
symbol) "painted probably by early Slavonic hands on the face of a
rock overhanging a sacred grotto in a fiord of the Bocche di Cattaro."
To this last-named example, given by Mr. Arthur Evans in his paper on
"Primitive Pictographs" (_Journal of Hellenic Studies_, xiv. ii. 1894)
may be added some pregnant remarks by the same authority. "When we
recall the spontaneous artistic qualities of the ancient race which
has left its records in the carvings on bone and ivory in the caves of
the 'Reindeer Period,' this evidence of at least partial continuity
on the northern shores of the Mediterranean suggests speculations
of the deepest interest. Overlaid with new elements, swamped in the
dull, though materially higher, Neolithic civilisation, may not the
old æsthetic faculties which made Europe the earliest-known home of
anything that can be called human art, as opposed to mere tools and
mechanical contrivances, have finally emancipated themselves once more
in the Southern regions, where the old stock most survived? In the
extraordinary manifestations of artistic genius to which, at widely
remote periods and under the most diverse political conditions, the
later populations of Greece and Italy have given birth, may we not be
allowed to trace the re-emergence, as it were, after long underground
meanderings, of streams whose upper waters had seen the daylight of
that earlier world?" (Presidential Address to the Anthropological
Section, British Association. _Nature_, 1st Oct. 1896.)
But man at the same stage of culture being everywhere practically the
same, there is, in the paucity of examples from the Europe of the
past, compensation in the specimens of graphic art found among extant
barbaric folk. It is probable that a good proportion of these lack
significance, but _the pictograph is the parent of the alphabet_, and
therefore the careful transcripts of rock and other paintings which
explorers have made may yet prove to be of value when interpreted
in the light of examples whose gradations have been traced. Since
the extinction of the Tasmanians, whom anthropologists regard as the
nearest approach to Palæolithic man, the Australians stand, in certain
respects, at the bottom of the scale, although the ingenuity of their
social organisations warrants hesitation in making them the nadir of
human kind. But as the reproductions show (figs. 3 and 3_a_), their
attempts at art are inferior to the spirited designs of the prehistoric
cave-dwellers.
[Illustration: Fig. 3.--Aboriginal Rock Carvings (Australia)]
[Illustration: Fig. 3_a_.--Aboriginal Rock Paintings (Australia)]
Mr. R. H. Mathews, who has made an extensive survey of the
rock-paintings and carvings, says that one type serves for another,
so lacking are all in variety; "the stencilled and impressed hands,
the outlines of men and animals rudely depicted in various colours,
appearing to be universally distributed over the continent." He adds
that "although it will be better not to attempt to suggest meanings
to the groups of native drawings until a very much larger amount of
information has been brought together ... still when we know that
drawings such as these by uncivilised nations of all times, in various
parts of the world, have ultimately been found to be full of meaning,
it is not unreasonable for us to expect that the strange figures
painted and carved upon rocks all over Australia will some day be
interpreted. Perhaps some of these pictures are ideographic expressions
of events in the history of the tribe; certain groupings of figures may
portray some legend; many of the animals probably represent totems;
and it is likely that a number of them were executed for pastime and
amusement." (_Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, xxv. 2, p.
153.) In their recently published "Native Tribes of Central Australia,"
Messrs. Spencer and Gillen divide the rock-paintings into two series,
those of ordinary type, and those which, found in places strictly
taboo to women and children and uninitiated men, are associated with
totems, _i.e._ with the natural object, whether living or non-living,
from which the tribe believes itself to be descended. These totemistic
figures, called _Churinga_ (a general native term for sacred objects)
_Ilkinia_, are frequently in the form of spiral and concentric circles,
others being portraits of the totems themselves, as low in type as the
centipede or witchetty grub.
[Illustration: Fig. 4.--Bushman Paintings]
[Illustration: Fig. 4_a_.--Bushman Paintings]
The faces of sandstone caverns in South Africa are often covered with
paintings which are the handiwork of Bushmen (figs. 4, 4_a_, and
4_b_). With a skill showing some advance on the art of the Australian
aborigines there is depicted, usually in black or brownish-red colour,
the hunting and other exploits which make up life among a people
who represent the aboriginal races of the southern portion of the
continent. Some of the drawings border on caricature; others, in the
words of an observer, "suggest actual portraiture. The ornamentation
of the head-dresses, feathers, beads tassels, &c., seemed to have
claimed much care, while the higher class of drawings indicate correct
appreciation of the actual appearance of objects, and perspective and
foreshortening are well rendered." (Mark Hutchinson, _Journal of the
Anthropological Institute_, xiv. p. 464.)
[Illustration: Fig. 4_b_.--Specimen of Bushmen Rock Sculptures]
[Illustration: Fig. 4_c_.--Engravings found on Rocks in Algeria
(compare with Bushmen type)]
These probably now degraded folk, who live on lizards, locusts, and
roots when other food fails, have a good store of legend and folk-lore.
Fig. 5 seems to portray their belief in "sympathetic magic," if, as
conjectured, it represents the dragging of an hippopotamus or other
amphibious animal across the land for the purpose of producing rain.
The Semangs of the Malay Peninsula use a bamboo rain-charm (fig. 6),
on which the wind-driven showers are depicted in oblique lines, and,
among many other examples wherein the higher and lower culture meet
together, there is one supplied by old Rome, where it was the custom to
throw images of the corn-spirit into the Tiber so that the crops might
be drenched with rain. As showing the persistency of superstitions,
here is a paragraph anent the severe drought in Russia last autumn:
"In another village of the district of Bugulma some moujiks opened
the grave of a peasant who had lately been buried, and then poured
water over the corpse, in the belief that this was the best method of
bringing rain."--_Daily Chronicle_, 24th August 1899.
[Illustration: Fig. 5.--Bushman Rain-Charm.]
[Illustration: Fig. 6.--Semang Rain-Charm.]
[Illustration: Fig. 6_a_.--Record of Expedition.]
The New World is rich in ancient monuments often adorned with symbolic
devices, but older than these are the pictographs covering erratic
blocks and cliff escarpments from Guiana to Nova Scotia, and westward
to the Rockies. Some are incised in the hard stone to a depth of
half an inch; others are traced in broad lines of red ochre or other
colour, their weather-worn state witnessing to a high antiquity. Their
purpose is often not easy to explain, but we know that therein lie the
germs whence alphabets sprung. One picture (fig. 6_a_) on the face
of a rock on the shore of Lake Superior, copied and interpreted by
Schoolcraft, records an expedition across the lake, led by Myeengun,
or "Wolf," a noted Indian chief. The crew of each canoe is denoted by
a series of upright strokes, Myeengun's chief ally, Kishkemanusee,
the "Kingfisher," being in the first canoe. The arch with three
circles (three suns under heaven) shows that the voyage took three
days. The tortoise (a frequent symbol of "land" in North American
picture-writing) seems to indicate the arrival of the expedition, while
the picture of the mounted chief evidences that the event took place
after the introduction of horses into Canada. Some of the examples,
less easy to explain, represent the migration of tribes; some, like the
sculptured eagle near the borders of Quauhuahuac ("the place near the
eagle") are symbolic boundary-marks; while others are direction-marks.
Some have life-size human figures, rayed or horned; one engraved on a
rock overlooking the Big Harpeth, in Tennessee, depicts a sun visible
four miles off. Doubtless a large number of this class (fig. 6_b_) are
merely the outcome of that rude artistic fancy of man which, as has
been seen, has had continuous expression from prehistoric times.
[Illustration: Fig. 6_b_.--Various Types of the Human Form]