The Swastika, the Earliest Known Symbol, and Its...

The prehistoric objects described in the foregoing chapter are not the only ones common to both Europe and America. Related to the spindle-whorls and bobbins is the art of weaving, and it is perfectly susceptible of demonstration that this art was practiced in the two hemispheres in prehistoric times. Woven fabrics have been found in the Swiss lake dwellings, in Scandinavia, and in nearly all parts of Europe. They belonged to the Neolithic and Bronze ages.

Figs. 373 and 374 illustrate textile fabrics in the Bronze Age. Both specimens are from Denmark, and the National Museum possesses another specimen (Cat. No. 136615) in all respects similar. While prehistoric looms may not have been found in Europe to be compared with the looms of modern savages in America, yet these specimens of cloth, with the hundreds of others found in the Swiss lake dwellings, afford the most indubitable proof of the use of the looms in both countries during prehistoric times.

Complementary to this, textile fabrics have been found in America, from the Pueblo country of Utah and Colorado, south through Mexico, Central and South America, and of necessity the looms with which they were made were there also. It is not meant to be said that the looms of the two hemispheres have been found, or that they or the textile fabrics are identical. The prehistoric looms have not been found in Europe, and those in America may have been affected by contact with the white man. Nor is it meant to be said that the textile fabrics of the two hemispheres are alike in thread, stitch, or pattern. But these at best are only details. The great fact remains that the prehistoric man of the two hemispheres had the knowledge to spin fiber into thread, to wind it on bobbins, and to weave it into fabrics; and whatever differences there may have been in pattern, thread, or cloth, they were finally and substantially the same art, and so are likely to have been the product of the same invention.

While it is not the intention to continue this examination among the prehistoric objects of the two hemispheres in order to show their similarity and thus prove migration, contact, or communication, yet it may be well to mention some of them, leaving the argument or proof to a future occasion.

The polished stone hatchets of the two hemispheres are substantially the same. There are differences of material, of course, for in each country the workman was obliged to use such material as was obtainable. There are differences in form between the polished stone hatchets of the two hemispheres, but so there are differences between different localities in the same hemisphere. Some hatchets are long, others short, some round, others flat, some have a pointed end, others a square or nearly square or unfinished end; some are large, others small. But all these differences are to be found equally well pronounced within each hemisphere.

Scrapers have also been found in both hemispheres and in all ages. There are the same differences in material, form, and appearance as in the polished stone hatchet. There is one difference to be mentioned of this utensil—i. e., in America the scraper has been sometimes made with a stem and with notches near the base, after the manner of arrow- and spear-heads, evidently intended to aid, as in the arrow- and spear-head, in fastening the tool in its handle. This peculiarity is not found in Europe, or, if found, is extremely rare. It is considered that this may have been caused by the use of a broken arrow- or spear-head, which seems not to have been done in Europe. But this is still only a difference in detail, a difference slight and insignificant, one which occurs seldom and apparently growing out of peculiar and fortuitous conditions.

The aboriginal art of making pottery was also carried on in the same or a similar manner in both hemispheres. The examples of this art are as numerous as the leaves on the trees. There were differences in the manipulation and treatment, but the principal fact remains that the art was the same in both countries. Not only were the products greatly similar, but the same style of geometric decoration by incised lines is common to both. Greater progress in making pottery was made in the Western than in the Eastern Hemisphere during prehistoric times.

The wheel was unknown in both hemispheres, and in both the manipulation of clay was by hand. True, in the Western Hemisphere there was greater dexterity and a greater number of methods employed. For example, the vase might be built up with clay inside a basket, which served to give both form and decoration; it was coiled, the damp clay being made in a string and so built up by a circular movement, drawing the side in or out as the string of clay was laid thereon, until it reached the top; it may have been decorated by the pressure of a textile fabric, real or simulated, into the damp clay. A few years ago it would have been true to have said that pottery decorated in this manner was peculiar to the Western Hemisphere, and that it had never been found in the Eastern Hemisphere, but Prince Poutjatine has lately found on his property, Bologoje, in the province of Novgorod, midway between Moscow and St. Petersburg, many pieces of prehistoric pottery which bear evidence of having been made in this manner, and while it may be rare in the Eastern Hemisphere, it is similar in these respects to thousands of pieces of prehistoric pottery in North America.

One of the great puzzles for archæologists has been the prehistoric jade implements found in both countries. The raw material of which these were made has never been found in sufficient quantities to justify anyone in saying that it is indigenous to one hemisphere and not to the other. It may have been found in either hemisphere and exported to the other. But of this we have no evidence except the discovery in both of implements made of the same material. This material is dense and hard. It is extremely difficult to work, yet the operations of sawing, drilling, carving, and polishing appear to have been conducted in both hemispheres with such similarity as that the result is practically the same.

Prehistoric flint-chipping was also carried on in both hemispheres with such similarity of results, even when performing the most difficult and delicate operations, as to convince one that there must have been some communication between the two peoples who performed them.

The bow and arrow is fairly good evidence of prehistoric migration, because of the singularities of the form and the intricacies of the machinery, and because it is probably the earliest specimen of a machine of two separate parts, by the use of which a missile could be sent at a greater distance and with greater force than if thrown by hand. It is possible that the sling was invented as early as the bow and arrow, although both were prehistoric and their origin unknown.

The bow and arrow was the greatest of all human inventions—greatest in that it marked man’s first step in mechanics, greatest in adaptation of means to the end, and as an invented machine it manifested in the most practical and marked manner the intellectual and reasoning power of man and his superiority over the brute creation. It, more than any other weapon, demonstrated the triumph of man over the brute, recognizing the limitations of human physical capacity in contests with the brute. With this machine, man first successfully made up for his deficiency in his contests with his enemies and the capture of his game. It is useless to ask anything of history about the beginnings of the bow and arrow; wherever history appears it records the prior existence, the almost universal presence, and the perfected use of the bow and arrow as a weapon. Yet this machine, so strange and curious, of such intricacy of manufacture and difficulty of successful performance, had with all its similarities and likenesses extended in prehistoric times almost throughout the then inhabited globe. It is useless to specify the time, for the bow and arrow existed earlier than any time of which we know; it is useless for us to specify places, for it was in use throughout the world wherever the world was occupied by neolithic man.

Imitative creature as was man, and slow and painful as were his steps in progress and in invention during his infancy on earth, when he knew nothing and had everything yet to learn, it is sufficiently wonderful that he should have invented the bow and arrow as a projectile machine for his weapons; but it becomes doubly and trebly improbable that he should have made duplicate and independent inventions thereof in the different hemispheres. If we are to suppose this, why should we be restricted to a separate invention for each hemisphere, and why may we not suppose that he made a separate invention for each country or each distant tribe within the hemisphere? Yet we are met with the astonishing but, nevertheless, true proposition that throughout the entire world the bow and arrow existed in the early times mentioned, and was substantially the same machine, made in the same way, and serving the same purpose.