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

The present Piaroas of Venezuela are in the habit of painting their bodies by a process different from that of the North American Indian. They make stamps of wood, which, being colored (as types are with ink), they apply to their bodies. Fig. 982 shows examples of these stamps. [See fig. 343 of the present paper.] The designs are substantially the same as some petroglyphs. They either copied the models they found carved on the rocks by peoples who preceded them, or they knew the meaning and preserved the tradition. The former is the only tenable hypothesis. Painting is to the Piaroas both ornamentation and necessity. It serves, not only as a garment to protect them against insects, but becomes a fancy costume to grace their feasts and meetings.

These designs are not presented as Swastikas nor of any evolution or derivation from one. They show a style common enough to Central and South America, to the Antilles and the Canary Islands,[305] which might easily produce a Swastika. The aboriginal designer of these might, if we depend upon the theory of psychological similarity of culture among all peoples, at his next attempt make a Swastika. Yet, with the hundreds of similar patterns made during the centuries of aboriginal occupation and extending throughout the countries named, none of these seem ever to have produced a Swastika.