On Clyde (if the disputed things be genuine) we find decorated plaques or
slabs of soft stone, of very various dimensions and shapes. In Australia
some of these objects are round, many oval, others elongated, others thin
and pointed, like a pencil; others oblong--while on Clyde, some are
round, one is coffin-shaped, others are palette-shaped, others are pear-
shaped (the oval tapering to one extremity), one is triangular, one is
oblong. {77} In Australia, as on Clyde, the stones bear some of the
archaic markings common on the rock faces both in Scotland and in Central
Australia: on large rocks they are _painted_, in Australia, in Scotland
they are _incised_. I maintain that there is a singularly strong analogy
between the two sets of circumstances, Scottish and Australian; large
rocks inscribed with archaic designs; smaller stones inscribed with some
of these designs. Is it not so? Dr. Munro, on the other hand, asserts
that there is no such parallelism.
But I must point out that there is, to some extent, an admitted
parallelism. "The familiar designs which served as models to the Clyde
artists"--"plain cups and rings, with or without gutter channels,
spirals, circles, concentric circles, semicircles, horseshoe and harp-
shaped figures, etc.," occur, or a selection of them occurs, both on the
disputed objects, and on the rocks of the hills. So Dr. Munro truly says
(p. 260).
The same marks, plain cups, cups and rings, spirals, concentric circles,
horseshoes, medial lines with short slanting lines proceeding from them,
like the branches on a larch, or the spine of a fish, occur on the rocks
of the Arunta hills, and also on plaques of stone cherished and called
churinga ("sacred") by the Arunta. {78} Here is what I call
"parallelism."
Dr. Munro denies this parallelism.
There are, indeed, other parallelisms with markings other than those of
the rocks at Auchentorlie which Dr. Munro regards as the sources of the
faker's inspiration. Thus, on objects from Dumbuck (Munro, plate XV.
figs, 11 and 12), there are two "signs": one is a straight line,
horizontal, with three shorter lines under it at right angles, the other
a line with four lines under it. These signs "are very frequent in
Trojan antiquities," and on almost all the "hut urns" found "below the
lava at Marino, near Albano, or on ancient tombs near Corneto." Whatever
they mean, (and Prof. Sayce finds the former of the two "signs" "as a
Hittite hieroglyph,") I do not know them at Auchentorlie. After "a
scamper among the surrounding hills," the faker may have passed an
evening with Dr. Schliemann's _Troja_ (1884, pp. 126, 127) and may have
taken a hint from the passages which have just been cited. Or he may
have cribbed the idea of these archaic markings from Don Manuel de
Gongora y Martinez, his _Antiguedades Pre-historicas de Andalucia_
(Madrid, 1868, p. 65, figures 70, 71). In these Spanish examples the
marks are, clearly, "schematised" or rudimentary designs of animals, in
origin. Our faker is a man of reading. But, _enfin_, the world is full
of just such markings, which may have had one meaning here, another
there, or may have been purely decorative. "Race" has nothing to do with
the markings. They are "universally human," though, in some cases, they
may have been transmitted by one to another people.
{ Fig. 5: p80a.jpg}
The reader must decide as to whether I have proved my parallelisms,
denied by Dr. Munro, between the Clyde, Australian, and other markings,
whether on rocks or on smaller stones. {80a}
{ Fig. 6: p80b.jpg}
It suffices me to have tried to prove the parallelism between Australian
and Clyde things, and to record Dr. Munro's denial thereof--"I
unhesitatingly maintain that there is no parallelism whatever between the
two sets of objects." {80b}
{ Fig. 7: p80c.jpg}