I remarked, early in this tract, that "with due deference, and with
doubt, I think Dr. Munro's methods capable of modification." I meant
that I prefer, unlike Dr. Munro in this case, to extend the
archaeological gaze beyond the limits of things already known to occur in
the Scottish area which--by the way--must contain many relics still
unknown. I
"Let Observation with extensive view
Survey mankind from China to Peru,"
to discover whether objects analogous to those under dispute occur
anywhere among early races of the past or present. This kind of wide
comparison is the method of Anthropology. Thus Prof. Rhys and others
find so very archaic an institution as the reckoning of descent in the
female line,--inheritance going through the Mother,--among the Picts of
Scotland, and they even find traces of totemism, an institution already
outworn among several of the naked tribes of Australia, who reckon
descent in the male line.
Races do not, in fact, advance on a straight and unbroken highway of
progress. You find that the Kurnai of Australia are more civilised, as
regards the evolution of the modern Family, than were the Picts who built
crannogs and dug canoes, and cultivated the soil, and had domesticated
animals, and used iron, all of them things that the Kurnai never dreamed
of doing.
As to traces of Totemism in Scotland and Ireland, I am not persuaded by
Professor Rhys that they occur, and are attested by Celtic legends about
the connection of men and kinships with animals, and by personal and
kinship names derived from animals. The question is very obscure. {63}
But as the topic of Totemism has been introduced, I may say that many of
the mysterious archaic markings on rocks, and decorations of implements,
in other countries, are certainly known to be a kind of shorthand design
of the totem animal. Thus a circle, whence proceeds a line ending in a
triple fork, represents the raven totem in North America: another design,
to our eyes meaningless, stands for the wolf totem; a third design, a set
of bands on a spear shaft, does duty for the gerfalcon totem, and so on.
{64a} Equivalent marks, such as spirals, and tracks of emu's feet, occur
on sacred stones found round the graves of Australian blacks on the
Darling River. They were associated with rites which the oldest blacks
decline to explain. The markings are understood to be totemic.
Occasionally they are linear, as in Ogam writing. {64b}
Any one who is interested in the subject of the origin, in certain
places, of the patterns, may turn to Mr. Haddon's _Evolution of Art_.
{64c} Mr. Haddon shows how the Portuguese pattern of horizontal
triangles is, in the art of the uncivilised natives of Brazil, meant to
represent bats. {64d} A cross, dotted, within a circle, is directly
derived, through several stages, from a representation of an alligator.
{64e}
We cannot say whether or not the same pattern, found at Dumbuck, in
Central Australia, and in tropical America, arose in the "schematising"
of the same object in nature, in all three regions, or not. Without
direct evidence, we cannot assign a meaning to the patterns.