Dr. Munro now objects that among the objects reckoned by me as analogous
to churinga is a perforated stone with an incised line, and smaller
slanting side lines, said to have been found at Dumbuck; "9 inches long,
3.5 inches broad, and 0.5 an inch thick." {108} I wish that he gave us
the weight. He says, "that no human being would wear this as an
ornament."
No human being wears any churinga "as an ornament!" Nobody says that
they do.
Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, moreover, speak of "a long stone churinga,"
and of "especially large ones" made by the mythical first ancestors of
the race. Churinga, over a foot in length, they tell us, are not usually
perforated; many churinga are not perforated, many are: _but the Arunta
do not know why some are perforated_. There is a legend that, of old,
men hung up the perforated churinga on the sacred _Nurtunja_ pole: and so
they still have _perforated_ stone churinga, not usually more than a foot
in length. {109}
If Dr. Munro has studied Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, he cannot but know
that churinga are not ornaments, are not all oval, but of many shapes and
sizes, and that churinga larger than the 9 inch perforated stone from
Dumbuck are perforated, and attached to strings. I cannot tell the
reason why, any better than the Arunta can; and, of course, I cannot know
why the 9 inch stone from Dumbuck (if genuine) was perforated. But what
I must admire is the amazing luck or learning of Dr. Munro's supposed
impostor. Not being "a semi-detached idiot" he must have known that no
mortal would sling about his person, as an ornament, a chunk of stone 9
inches long, 3.5 broad, and 0.5 an inch thick. Dr. Munro himself insists
on the absurdity of supposing that "any human being" would do such a
thing. Yet the forger drilled a neat hole, as if for a string for
suspension, at the apex of the chunk. If he knew, before any other human
being in England, that the Arunta do this very thing to some stone
churinga, though seldom to churinga over a foot in length,--and if he
imitated the Arunta custom, the impostor was a very learned impostor. If
he did _not_ know, he was a very lucky rogue, for the Arunta coincide in
doing the same thing to great stone churinga: without being aware of any
motive for the performance as they never suspend churinga to anything,
though they say that their mythical ancestors did.
The impostor was also well aware of the many perforated stones that exist
in Scotland, not referred to by Dr. Munro. He perforated some which
could not be worn as ornaments, just as the Arunta do. We shall find
that the forger, either by dint of wide erudition, or by a startling set
of chance coincidences, keeps on producing objects which are analogous to
genuine relics found in many sites of early life.
This is what makes the forger so interesting.
My theory of the forger is at the opposite pole from the theory of Dr.
Munro. He says that, "in applying these local designs" (the worldwide
archaic patterns,) to unworked splinters of sandstone and pieces of water-
worn shale and slate, "the manufacturers had evidently not sufficient
archaeological knowledge to realise the significance of the fact that
they were doing what prehistoric man, in this country, is never known to
have done before." {111}
But, (dismissing the Kintyre and Tappock stones,) the "manufacturers" did
know, apparently, that perforated and inscribed, or uninscribed tablets
and plaques of shale and schist and slate and gas coal were found in
America, France, Russia, and Portugal, and imitated these things or
coincided in the process by sheer luck. The "manufacturers" were,
perhaps, better informed than many of their critics. But, if the things
are genuine, more may be found by research in the locality.