ANT HEOPOLUG-iCA T STUDIES. A. W. BUCKLAMD, Ill ~ : ( M ANTHEOPOLOGICAL STUDIES BY A. W. BUOKLAND, MEMBER OF THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND, HONORARY MEMBER OF THE BATH ROYAL LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC INSTITUTION, HONORARY MEMBER OF THE ISLE OF MAN NATURAL ^HISTORY AND ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY. WARD AND DOWNEY, 12, YORK STREET, COVENT G^ARDEK 1891. All right* reserved. RICHARD CLAY the Sooloo Archipelago and among the Esquimaux." l It is evident that a race so lowly organized must have taken an immense period of time in reaching their present habitat, during which, with the accompanying changes of climate, soil, and food, many modifications may have been possible, and the same may be said of the great Mongoloid race, which from Northern Asia seems to have slowly percolated through the double American continent, showing certainly many modifica- tions of the original type. 1 Early Modes of Navigation, Col. Lane Fox (Pitt-Rivers) ; Jouriial of Anthropological Institute, April 1875. CHAPTER VI. MIGRATIONS. Civilized Man alone capable of ranging from the Tropics to the Poles Barriers to Early Migrations The Phoenicians and the Mammoth Changes effected by Human Agency Distribu- tion of Mammals prior to the Advent of Man Change of Habitat consequent upon Glacial Epoch Did Man follow the Game ? Professor Boyd-Dawkins on the Eskimo Early Art of the Reindeer Race Its Importance Wanderings of the River-drift Men The Bushmen, and other Dwarf Races of Africa Are they also Offshoots of Paleolithic Man ? Neo- lithic Races The Basques Asiatic Migrations Wanderings of the Malayo-Polynesians across the Pacific Effects of Involuntary Migrations Modern Instance Migrations of the Aryans Recent Theories. IF we believe that man physically is similarly con- stituted to the lower animals, then the same influences which have caused variation and extinction of species among them, would likewise affect the human race. It is, however, evident that man would be less affected than the lower animals, by change of environment, since he alone of all animals has the power of checking and controlling, by artificial means, the influences of climate, soil, and food, which have so powerful an effect upon animal and plant life. Nevertheless, that man is not exempt from these influences is certain, otherwise the present varieties of mankind would not exist. But it is civilized man alone who possesses the power of ranging from the tropics to the poles unharmed. The savage races are almost as susceptible to external changes as wild animals, and are nearly as incapable of changing and extending their geographical area, since G4 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. even narrow seas present an insuperable barrier to migrations, and lakes, rivers, deserts, and mountain chains are to them formidable obstacles. We may be sure, therefore, that all the early migrations, made prior to the invention of the art of navigation, were very slow. Migration was, as it were, involuntary and imper- ceptible, caused by necessity, a gradual retreat from cold or drought ; or, as primaeval man was pre-eminently a hunter, from the change of habitat of his prey. This prey in Europe was, as we have seen, the mammoth, the bear, the rhinoceros, and other great beasts, and some- what later the reindeer, the horse, the bison or buffalo, the musk-ox, and several kinds of deer and antelopes. There are people still living who believe that the mammoth was introduced into Britain by the Phoeni- cians, and that the other great beasts, its cotempo- raries, as the cave lion, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, &c., were brought over by these same great merchants for gladiatorial combats ; in fact one would imagine that these somewhat mythical adventurers were in the habit of constantly wandering over the seas with a sort of Barnum's show, in order to astonish the natives among whom they might be thrown. Strange and ludicrous as such an idea must appear to the geologist and an- thropologist, we must remember that all the great changes of fauna and flora in modern times have been brought about through human agency ; and that to one unacquainted with geology, it would seem much more natural that lions, tigers, hysenas, bears, elephants, and hippopotami should have been brought here by man, than that they should have been born and bred here, have wandered uncontrolled through our forests, and frequented our caves and rivers. 1 1 An amusing instance of this, from a religions journal called The Champion of the Faith against Current Infidelity, dated April 20th and May llth, 1882, was quoted by Mr. Pengelly in his Presidential Address to the Anthropological Department of the British Association, in 1883. Speaking of the Victoria Cave, Yorkshire, the writer says "We have now to present our own MIGRATIONS. 65 If we pass in review a few of the changes brought about by man in quite modern times, we shall be startled by their magnitude. Four hundred years ago potatoes and tobacco were unknown in Europe, whilst the savages in Australia, New Zealand, and the South Sea Islands had never seen a white face, nor a grain of wheat, nor the ox, sheep, and pig, nor the rabbit, which has since become a pest in Australia and New Zealand. The dominant white race of Europe had never set foot in America, whilst the horse, now wild on the prairies, was also unknown, although it had existed there in long-forgotten ages. So also the cereals, now so largely cultivated, with the exception of maize, were new to American soil, and maize had never been seen in Western Europe. If we go back farther still we can trace man's agency always changing the face of nature, exterminating some animals, introducing others ; altering the flora of the countries to which he wanders as well as the fauna, by bringing with him seeds and fruits from other lands. view of the Victoria Cave and the phenomena connected with it, premising that a great many of the old mines in Europe were opened by Phoenician colonists and metal workers a thousand years before the Romans had set foot in Britain, which accounts for the various floors of stalagmite found in most caves, and also for the variety of groups of bones embedded in them. The animals represented by them when living were not running wild about the hills devouring each other, as science-men suppose, but were the useful auxiliaries and trained drudges of the miners in their work. Some of them, as the bear, had simply been hunted and used for food, and others of a fierce character, as the hyaena, to frighten and to keep in awe the native Britons. The larger species of mammalia, as the elephant, the rhinoceros, and hippo- potamus, and beasts foreign to the country, the Romans no less than the Phoenicians had every facility in bringing with them in their ships of commerce from Carthage or other of the African ports. These, with the native horse, ox, and stag, which are always found in larger numbers in the caves than the remains of foreign animals, all worked peacefully together in the various operations of the mines The hippopotamus, although amphibious, is a grand beast for heavy work, such as mining, quarrying, or road-making, and his keeper would take care that he was comfortably lodged in a tank of water during the night." 66 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. Great changes in Great Britain can thus be traced to the Roman occupation, whilst the monuments of Egypt, Assyria, and Greece show the same process at work in far more ancient times ; nor must we omit the record of the King of Tyre bringing apes and peacocks from a remote unknown land to grace the court of Solomon. But we cannot imagine man as having had anything to do with the deportation of those great beasts which ceased to exist long before he had invented any means whereby such creatures could have been transported across the seas, even if he had at that time attained to any knowledge of the art of navigation. If we advance still further through the corridors of time, and look into the magic mirror held up to us by geology, we shall find the changes wrought by man infinitesimal as compared with those which took place without his interference, since they were for the most part prior to his existence. Let us look for a moment at the wonderful transforma- tion thus revealed to us, and see how far we can trace the means by which it has been produced. It seems hard to realize the undoubted fact that at a late geological period, instead of the oxen, sheep, goats, deer, and swine so familiar to us now, Europe, including Great Britain, was the home of animals now either extinct or known only in Africa and in the extreme north. I have already spoken of some of these, the hippopotamus, hya3na, rhinoceros, elephant, cave lion, a species of tiger, cave bear, as well as smaller animals too numerous to mention, which have been found here in a fossil state, but which have long since all vanished from Europe, and many of them from the world, having been supplanted by new species, now found only in Africa or Southern Asia. In addition to these we find the reindeer and musk-ox, which are now known only in extreme northern latitudes, and the great elk, which seems to have lingered on to com- paratively modern times in Ireland. We thus see mingled together a tropical and an Arctic fauna, which by and by die out or disappear, to be replaced by the existing European animals of a .totally different type ; MIGRATIONS. 67 and with these changes we find corresponding changes in the accompanying human race. If we go back still farther to the Tertiary period of geology, we find mingled with the remains of animals such as those mentioned above, which although extinct in Europe have representatives in Asia and Africa, others which seem to have died out and left no living representatives. Farther back still in Secondary strata we are startled to find, in the words of Mantell, that " the fauna and flora of this ancient land of the Secondary epoch had many important features which now char- acterize Australasia. The Stonesfield marsupials and the Purbeck Plagiaulax are allied to genera now restricted to New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land ; and it is a most interesting fact, as Professor Phillips was the first to remark, that the organic re- mains with which these relics are associated, also corre- spond with the existing forms of the Australian continent and neighbouring seas ; for it is in those distant latitudes that the waters are inhabited by Cestracions, Trigonise, and Terebratulse ; and that the dry land is clothed with Araucarise, Tree-ferns, and Cycadeous plants." l Here then we find among the fossils of our island, small as it is, and surrounded by the ocean, animals and plants of types belonging to all lands and all climates, from the tropical to the Arctic, many of which have become quite extinct, whilst others survive in a modified form in remote lands, and even at the Antipodes ; and it will be noticed that those which are the farthest removed in space, are also the most archaic in type, as the marsupials and tree-ferns of Australia. Thus we have the whole problem of geographical distribution brought before us at a glance, and the difficulties it presents must be apparent to every one. Whence came those antiquated forms which have left their fossilized remains to tell of their presence in a land to which they have been for so many ages strangers ? Was there some central spot whence they spread themselves to Australia on the one hand, and Great 1 Wonders of Geology, vol. ii. p. 511. 68 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. Britain on the other ? or did they arise in both lands by creation or evolution at different geological periods ? I suppose there are few now who would affirm that opossums, kangaroos, &c., with the peculiar vegetation now known as Australian, were first created in Great Britain, suffered to die out there, and then re-created in Australia, to be succeeded in Britain by great beasts which have since been found only suitable for the tropical lands of Asia and Africa ? But if we cannot look to new creations for the explanation of facts which cannot be gainsaid, we must be prepared to admit vast geographical changes, and immense periods of time. The first evident change which suggests itself is, that at the time when Great Britain was occupied by the ponderous beasts enumerated, it could not have been the small isolated island it is now, but must have formed an integral portion of the European continent. This, indeed, we know from geology has occurred more than once in the long past geological ages, and the projectors of the Channel Tunnel now turn to advan- tage that continuous chalk formation which once served as a causeway between England and France. This, however, is a small change compared with those geo- logical revolutions which must have taken place in other parts of the world to allow, first, of the 1 interchange of animals and plants, to be followed by that subsequent isolation which has preserved certain types from ex- tinction in remote localities, as the marsupials in Australia, which, as I have before pointed out, represent a type which existed in Europe at a remote geological period. Mr. Sclater was the first to map out the existing fauna of the world into regions, and to lay down the general law " That the more distant countries are, the more dissimilar are their animals and plants ; and that if the animals and plants of two countries are alike, they must either now or recently have been in geo- graphical connection" and this he has illustrated by (1) " The Antilles, or West India Islands, which have in many respects a peculiar fauna, containing a certain MIGRATIONS. 69 number of animals not known to occur elsewhere. But in Trinidad the most remote of them these animals do not occur, but another set the same as those of Venezuela are found. It is therefore evident, if the above proposition be true, that Trinidad is merely a little bit of the South American continent broken off at a comparatively recent epoch. (2) In the same way we know that the animals and plants of the British Islands are identical, or very nearly so, with those of the rest of Northern Europe. And we conclude, there- fore, as is likewise manifest from geological investiga- tions, that the Straits of Dover are of comparatively recent formation. (3) A third well-known instance is afforded by the islands of Sumatra, Java, and Borneo. Java is much nearer to Sumatra than Borneo. But the animals of Sumatra and Borneo are very nearly alike, whereas those of Java are in many cases different. It has been argued, therefore, and will no doubt be ulti- mately found to have been the case, that Sumatra has been joined to Borneo more recently than to Java." l Mr. Wallace gives much fuller details than Mr. Sclater, and brings forward a great many curious and anomalous facts, especially with regard to the fauna and flora of the various islands ; but into these we cannot follow him, although we must remark upon the singular fact that many islands do not derive their animal and vegetable life from the land nearest to them, but apparently from that most distant ; more especially is this remarked in the case of Madagascar, which, lying close to the African continent, yet possesses a fauna and flora more nearly resembling South America. Mr. Wallace, however, does not look upon this as denoting that South America and Madagascar have ever been united by direct land connection, but that both have been peopled from a common source, the intermediate links having been destroyed, or rather superseded by more modern forms ; that is to say, that the forms now found in South America and Madagascar 1 Lecture on Geographical Distribution of Animals, Manchester, 1874. 70 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. have once been very widely spread, but have since become restricted to the regions where they are now found. There can, however, be little doubt that in some cases a change of climate has been the chief factor in causing the migrations of animals. Thus, the reindeer and the musk-ox the former so abundant in Europe during, or immediately after, the glacial epoch un- doubtedly followed the retreating ice and snow to their present habitat, and it is one of the most interesting and debatable of modern problems, whether they were followed in their retreat by the hunters who are known to have lived upon them during their sojourn in Europe. Many people look upon these men of the reindeer period as an extinct race, but Mr. Boyd-Dawkins finds them in the modern Eskimo, who still live much as the paleolithic reindeer race lived, using many im- plements almost, if not quite, identical with those used by the European hunters of the reindeer, and distinguished like them by great artistic skill. The reindeer race was considered by Broca to be a second and more advanced wave of emigrants of a cognate race to the men of Neanderthal, Cannstadt, and Borreby, but whether they came to Europe from Africa, or from Asia, or developed a higher civilization by long residence in Europe, has never been determined ; although could we trace the prior habitat of the reindeer, it would probably reveal that of the paleolithic hunters, who have delineated him so truly on bones and stones found with other relics in French and German caves. Many casts of these very early drawings may be seen in the British Museum, and many more are figured in M. Cartailhac's work La France Prehistorique. Perhaps the most interesting of all is the picture of the mammoth, drawn on a piece of the tusk of that animal, proving conclusively the contemporaneity of man and the extinct mammal; the reindeer is very frequently figured, singly and in groups, and also the horse and what would appear to be a quagga or zebra. 1 The 1 Perhaps the hipparion, which is known to have lived in Europe in Meiocene times, and miyht have survived. MIGRATIONS. 71 bear, the ox, the boar, the seal, fish, and snakes, are all depicted, as well as human figures, the latter always nude, although, in one case at least, adorned with necklaces and bracelets; yet it is certain from the needles found that they must have made and used clothing, probably of skins. The great interest which attaches to these works of art, in addition to their merit, is the proof they afford that the animals whose bones are found together in caves, really co-existed with each other, and with man, but the animals depicted seem to be chiefly of the Arctic type, signifying that the period was glacial. We do not find the lion, the hippopotamus, the rhinoceros l represented, but the mammoth, the reindeer, the seal ; and it certainly does not seem unreasonable to suppose that since all these have retreated to the far north, the men who represented them so truly might have followed their prey, and that their descendants may now be traced in the Eskimo, leading a similar life, using similar tools, and trapping the same game ; although the reindeer race of paleolithic times do not appear to have domesticated the reindeer as the Eskimo of the present day do. 2 It may be well here to give a list of the animals, according to M. Cartailhac, found in the caves of France, and now either extinct or migrated. fUrsus spelaeus. I Felis antiqua. Extinct -| Rhinoceros tichorhinus. I Elephas primigenius. [Cervus megaceros. t Ursus Ferox. r Towards the west ' < Ovibos moschatus. ( Cervus canadensis. Mgrate'M Towards the south j Felis leo (spelaea). ( Hyaena crocuta (spelsea). ^ Towards the east { Antilope saiga. 1 One representation of the rhinoceros has, I believe, been found. 2 It has, however, always struck me that the complicated lines to be seen in the group of reindeer from these caves, in the British Museum, may represent reins or harness. 72 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. Migrated f Gulo fuscus. | Canis lagopus. ' To the Arctic reions Lagomys. tCervus tarandus. SArctomys marmota. Antilope rupicapra. Capra ibex. ' Ursus arctos. Felis lynx. Existing species of the temperate Canis lupus. Castor fiber. zone of Europe on the point of-{ extincti011 - I Bison europ^us. Cervus alces. Equus caballus. It is supposed that a great interval of time intervened between the men of the Drift, that is the earliest paleolithic race, and the hunters of the reindeer known as cave-men, because their relics are found chiefly in caves in which they seem to have lived, accumulating therein vast masses of ddbris, proving long occupation. Dr. John Evans, however, thinks they were probably of the same race and cotemporaneous; their range, however, and stage of culture, appears to have been very different. The River-drift men, says Mr. Boyd-Dawkins, wandered over the whole of Europe south of Norfolk, leaving traces behind in Spain, Italy, and Greece, and through Asia Minor and the whole of India. The cave-man is restricted to the area extending from the Alps and Pyrenees as far north as Derbyshire and Belgium, and has not as yet been found farther east than Poland and Styria. 1 Mr. Dawkins believes the River-drift man to have existed in Europe for countless generations before the advent of the cave-man, and to have become extinct like many of the animals which co-existed with him. It is very singular, that the cave-men existing at so very early a period of the world's history, should have developed so much artistic skill as is shown in their 1 Early Man in Britain, p. 232. MIGRATIONS. 73 drawings, but it is also a very noteworthy fact that the same artistic skill is displayed not only by the Eskimo, supposed by Mr. Boyd-Dawkins to be their lineal descendants, but also by the Bushmen of South Africa, a race very low in the scale of humanity, but whose drawings and paintings will bear comparison with those of the cave-men and Eskimo. The late Sir Bartle Frere possessed a large collection of these Bushmen drawings, many of which were very remarkable, not only as works of art, but as historical records. In one of them these rude artists had depicted their own conquest by the Kaffirs, under the symbol of a black hand grasping a grasshopper. The Bushmen may be regarded as the cave-dwellers of Africa, and their weapons and mode of life seem to resemble that of the ancient Troglodytes, whilst their language is undoubtedly one of the most archaic known. It there- fore seems to me neither impossible nor improbable that they also may eventually be recognized as akin to the cave-men of Europe, percolating slowly through Africa in pursuit of the retreating game, which after deserting Europe during the great Ice age, have become modified in course of long ages into the lion and elephant, rhinoceros and hippopotamus of modern times. Besides the Bushmen l there are numerous dwarf tribes or races in the interior, described by all travellers as differing widely in size, colour, and other particulars from the black races, and which, in the supposition I have ventured to make, may be regarded as various offshoots from the parent stock of paleolithic times, changed in the lapse of ages, for they seem to have no affinity with the Negro, the Kaffir, and the Arab, who at present divide the great African continent except where they have been displaced by Europeans. Some of the migrations of these latter races have taken place in 1 We must not omit to mention here the dwarfs described by Mr. Stanley as dwelling in the great forest, a race evidently akin to the Bushmen, and which seems traceable much farther south, being described by Mr. A. A. Anderson in his Twenty-five Years in a Waggon. 74 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. what may be regarded as historical times, although the original home of the great Bantu or Kaffir race has not been defined. Returning to Europe, we find that when the great ice cap of the glacial period had disappeared, a new race, with new weapons, new modes of life, and more advanced in civilization, makes its appearance, ushering in the neolithic, or polished stone age. But with neolithic times there is a decided change not only in weapons, but in the type of skull of their users, which leads to the inference that a new route of migration had suc- ceeded the old ; that probably the connection with Africa had ceased, and that with Asia had commenced, or become more practicable. This is testified not only by the advent of a race with Mongoloid affinities, bear- ing w'ith them weapons of better form and finish ; but also by the fauna by which they were accompanied ; by the style of architecture which they seem to have introduced ; by their mode of sepulture ; and by their knowledge of pottery, and of cereal agriculture, for the cultivated cereals, wheat, barley, rye, seem to have been of Asiatic origin. It is not, however, necessary to sup- pose that all these advances in civilization were brought to Europe at the same time, for a way having once been opened, it is probable that a succession of migrations took place, and each may have added somewhat to the knowledge of its predecessors. This race or succession of races, perhaps, contributed what Professor Huxley has called the dark- white, or Melanochroic type, to the population of Europe ; which type has by many ethno- logists been found in the Basques of the present day. If these people introduced the fashion of lake-dwell- ings, which continued far into the Iron Age ; and if, as seems also probable, they introduced the dolmen and the stone circles so widely distributed, they must have spread themselves by degrees, not only over Southern and Western Europe, but also along the north of Africa where these monuments are traced ; and where Dr. Broca finds among the Berbers and other North African tribes, skulls resembling the Basques, whilst Mr. Hyde MIGRATIONS. 75 Clarke sees affinities of language. M. de Mortillet, by means of the domestic animals, the cereals, the curvilinear mode of ornamentation, as well as by the monuments introduced by these people, traces them to the Caucasus, Asia Minor, or Armenia. But the monu- ments and the pile-dwellings are found much farther to the east, and exist among the Hill Tribes of India, whilst pile-dwellings are found also in New Guinea and Central Africa. These extensions of similar customs do not, however, always imply racial connection, but only some relationship, perhaps commercial, for it is evident that commercial relations existed between distant lands in these remote times, to an extent we are slow to acknowledge, and a custom originating in one spot might thus spread north, south, east, and west, from this centre. A route once opened between Asia and Europe would be followed from time to time, not by one race or tribe only, but by any people endowed with the migratory instinct, or who might be driven from their native habitat by an invasion of stronger tribes; and this would account for the great variety of races traceable in the populations of Europe, most of which are supposed to have been of Asiatic origin. The migratory instincts of the human race are well shown by the comparatively recent wanderings from island to island in the South Seas, where the Malayo- Polynesians have displaced and are still displacing the earlier Papuans or Melanesians, who, with less perfect means of navigation, had yet succeeded in peopling these isolated lands at a remote period. But even these were not apparently the primary inhabitants, since in many of these islands are found monuments which cannot be assigned to either of the present occu- pying races, but which seem to have been the work of a more civilized race, which has wholly disappeared. How they got there, and when, are matters of con- jecture, although it would not seem difficult to prove that it was by this route that the civilization of Peru became approximated to that of the Old World, for a people capable of ranging from island to island across 76 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. the Pacific, would certainly be able to take the further step to the American continent ; and Easter Island, with its huge stone monuments, may fairly be regarded as one of the stepping-stones in this migration, which may have been originally accidental, for it cannot be doubted that from time to time vessels have been driven by storms from their destined course, and carried by cur- rents to unknown lands, and some of the scattered islands of the Pacific may have been thus peopled, whilst the Peruvian and Mexican traditions of strangers coming by sea and teaching them agriculture and other arts, appear to me to have a basis of fact, although American antiquaries reject the legends and believe in the indigenous origin of these early civilizations. That strangers appearing suddenly in the midst of barbarous peoples are regarded as supernatural beings and often venerated accordingly, we know from many historical records, of which I will cite two instances in modern times. First that of Buckley, in Australia, who chancing to take a spear from the grave of a chief, was looked upon as the embodied spirit of the deceased, and was consequently treated with great respect and consider- ation by those who had never before seen a white man. In the second place there is the recorded instance of several whites, and amongst them three or four women, who were wrecked at the mouth of a small river on the south-east coast of Africa in the early part of last century. One of these women was taken as a wife by a Kaffir chief, and enjoyed for many years the chief place of authority in the tribe, amongst whom she seems to have been most highly venerated. This chieftainess, known as Quma, who was probably English, as she had a daughter named Bess, seems to have taught the tribe to eat fish, 1 which no other Kaffir tribe will touch, and also to cultivate the sweet potato. Mr. Van Reenan, who had been sent from the Cape to inquire about these ship- wrecked whites, describes them as then (in 1790) old women. He says he would have taken the three 1 Mr. Kay noticed heaps of oyster-shells in the villages of this tribe. MIGRATIONS. 77 surviving Quma being dead back to the colony, but they begged to remain with their children and grand- children. Quma's son Daapa was a great chief, and it is said his enemies dared not attack him when in his prime with less than double or treble his force. " For," said one, " he and his men have the white man's blood in them." Daapa told Mr. Kay, the missionary who relates this history, that his mother was white, that her hair was at first long and black, but before she died it was quite white. Asked why he resided near the sea, he replied, " Because it is my mother ; from thence I sprang, and from thence I am fed when hungry." " This," says Mr. Kay, " I am told is a figure of speech frequently used by him in reference to the wreck of his mother and the supply of fish which he and his people obtain from the deep in cases of emergency." 1 Quma had five children, but only Daapa and his sister Bess survived at the time of Mr. Kay's visit, and he says truly, had these been dead the traditionary accounts in the fourth or fifth generation might have been regarded as mere romance. The description he gives of the mixed descendants of these white women is of interest to anthropologists. Daapa's children, by several wives, numbered twenty-two, eleven being sons. " The eldest seems to be about forty-five, and in point of appearance is one of the most haggard, filthy, and ill- looking natives I ever met with. Some of the others also are anything but handsome; their black shaggy beards, long visages, eyes somewhat sunk, prominent noses, and dirty white skins give them a wild and very unpleasant aspect." 2 One of these sons of Daapa, grand- son of the shipwrecked Quma, was named Johnny. " The word of Quma was a great word," said the natives. " When Quma our eyes saw, the hungry were always fed." Here then we see in modern history an incident similar to that related in the Peruvian story of Manco Capac and Mama Oello, who, being strangers coming up 1 Caffrarian Researches, by Stephen Kay, p. 304. 2 Ibid. p. 306. 78 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. from the sea, taught the natives the cultivation of maize and other useful arts. Why should this be regarded as incredible in Peru, and set down as a sun myth, when a similar incident undoubtedly happened in South Africa a century ago, causing changes in the food and agriculture, and in the physical characteristics of at least one Kaffir tribe ? The human race may be aptly compared to the waves of the sea, ever in motion, carried by currents from coast to coast, sometimes dashed by storms against unknown rocks to fall in spray far inland, leaving no trace behind save perhaps in a water-borne seed, to spring up as a new plant, or in a piece of wreckage at which men may marvel. The great onward movement is migration, always in process ; the storm-tossed spray is an accidental incident in the migration, which yet may be productive of great things, as we have seen in the introduction of new blood, new manners and customs, new beliefs, new implements and improvements in art. A great migration, or series of migrations, which has been productive of the most momentous consequences to the human race, has lately become the subject of a great conflict of opinion among scholars, chiefly philologists it is that of the great white race, formerly denominated Caucasian, from the supposed region of their origin as a race, and known later as Aryan. This race, which has become the dominant race of the world, had always been supposed to have originated somewhere in Central Asia, and to have spread thence to India and Persia on the one hand, and Europe on the other. Lately, however, German scholars, notably Penka and Schrader, have come to the conclusion that Scandinavia, or the countries adjoining the Baltic, must have been the primitive home of the Aryans, and this theory has been taken up enthusiastically by Canon Isaac Taylor and Professor Sayce, who find their nearest congeners in the Finns. This theory is based chiefly upon linguistic grounds, with which I am not competent to deal ; but it may be MIGRATIONS. 79 broadly stated that from the words used to designate trees, animals, and certain articles in common use in the various Aryan languages, it is concluded that the early Aryans before their several migrations, knew the oak, the birch, the beech, the fir, the bear, the wolf, the stag, the elk, and other things pertaining to Northern Europe, such as barley and rye, but knew nothing of wheat, which is a more southern grain, nor of the palm and the tiger, which are distinctly Asiatic. They say also that the primitive Aryans must have lived near a sea where the lobster, the seal, and the oyster were found, all which would seem to denote a northern sea- coast more in accord with the Baltic than the Caspian. The subject is altogether too wide, and too much in dispute, to be entered upon here, the only generally accepted facts being that this white, or Aryan race, occupy, and have occupied for unknown ages, India and Persia, as well as Europe; that they must have had some point of dispersal which up to this present is not known ; but they certainly were not indigenous in India, or in Central Europe, where there are evident traces of more than one older race. Meanwhile it may be affirmed that the origin and migrations of this great Aryan race remain undetermined, although the theory of Penka seems gaining ground ; but the disputes on the subject among the learned show how com- plicated is that which at the first glance might seem to be the most easily traceable of human migrations. Their appearance in Europe brings us to the Bronze Age, for they were undoubtedly acquainted with the use of metal. Whether they are to be identified with the Kelts has not yet been determined, but it is certain that since their advent civilization has made rapid progress ; the use of metal tools and weapons gave their users a great advantage over the users of stone imple- ments, although, doubtless, stone continued to be used for many purposes long after the introduction of bronze, 1 1 An instance of this may be cited from the recent discoveries of Mr. Flinders Petrie in Egypt, for in the cities explored he found implements of stone, copper, and bronze, all apparently in use at 80 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. and probably even into the Iron Age; but with the Bronze Age we may consider the era of civilization to have fairly begun at least in Europe, and doubtless a similar stage of progress had been reached long ages before in the far East and in Egypt, which has always been in the van of human progress. the same time. It must be borne in mind that it is the entire absence of all metal which constituted the age of stone. CHAPTER VII. PRIMITIVE AGRICULTURE. 1 Agriculture the First Step towards Civilization Probably Origin- ated with Women Antiquity of Cereal Agriculture Native Names Maize Was it known in the Eastern Hemisphere prior to Columbus ? Turkey Corn Ancient Cultivation in America Food of Ancient Egyptians Roots and Fruits preceded Cereals Chinese Agriculture Moon- Worship among Agriculturists Lunar Influence on Plants Agricul- tural Implements Bushman Digging-Sticks The Primi- tive Plough The Tribulum of the East Women as Agri- culturists Terraced Agriculture in China and Peru. IT has been justly remarked by Mr. Crawford that " no people ever attained a tolerable degree of civiliz- ation who did not cultivate one or other of the higher cereals," and yet, strange to say, the subject of Primitive Agriculture is enveloped in mystery. We know, indeed, that the cultivation of bread-stuffs dates from a most venerable antiquity ; that, as the author before quoted says, "The architectural monuments and the letters of Egypt, of ancient Greece, and of Italy, of Assyria, of Northern India, and of Northern China, were all pro- duced by consumers of wheat. The monuments and letters of Southern India, of the Hindu-Chinese countries, of Southern China, of Java, and of Sumatra, were the products of a rice-cultivating and rice-consuming people. The architectural monuments of Mexico and Peru, and we have no doubt also of Palenque", were produced by the cultivators and consumers of maize." 2 But when 1 See Journal of Anthropological Institute, May 1877. 2 Plants in Reference to Ethnology. Trans. Eth. Soc., vol. v. p. 190. G 82 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. we ask, as we very naturally do, to what people are we indebted for the origin of agriculture, and where is the native land of the cereals thus so early known, so widely spread, and so successfully cultivated in pre-historic times ? we are met with vague and uncertain responses, even from the most accomplished of ethnologists and botanists. Archaeological records prove that man in his earliest condition was no cultivator of the soil, no keeper of herds and flocks, but a wild and savage hunter, flitting from place to place continually in pursuit of his prey ; but, judging from the habits of modern savages, as tribes multiplied it must soon have been found incon- venient to allow the women and children to accompany the men in all their hunting expeditions ; these, there- fore, were probably left encamped in some convenient spot, to await the return of the hunters from distant raids upon the wild denizens of the forests. That agriculture originated with these watchers and waiters, seems at least probable, for amongst them food must have been often scarce, and in time of famine strange diet becomes both necessary and acceptable, and fish, bird, and insect must often have been supple- mented by wild fruits and roots, and at last by the grasses, the seeds being eaten without preparation. But as savages and animals, both wild and domesticated, learn by experience what to eat and what to avoid, so experience must have taught these primitive peoples that the seeds of the various grasses which they found growing wild, were not only good and sustaining food, but might be improved by being pounded and deprived of their husks, and by being either parched or mixed with water and baked or boiled; and doubtless they soon learnt by observation that these seeds, scattered over the land, would reproduce their kind, and furnish them with food for another season of scarcity. The almost universal employment of women exclusively, in agricultural pursuits among the lower races, may, per- haps, be adduced in confirmation of this conjectural origin of agriculture, which certainly could never have PRIMITIVE AGRICULTURE. 83 originated with nomadic tribes, because they could not have remained long enough in one spot to sow the seed and reap the harvest. It is evident that the discovery of this eminently useful art, would be a powerful aid to the formation of settled tribes, and eventually of civilized communities and powerful nations; because the necessity for a wandering life would thus by degrees be done away with ; the long journeys in search of food would be gradually abandoned for the cultivation of the soil, and herds would be kept to supplement the uncertain products of the chase, rendered yet more uncertain by the multiplication of man in one spot, and the con- sequent withdrawal of wild animals to a safe distance from their enemies. Thus man would become more and more dependent upon agriculture and upon the rearing of tame cattle, and from a hunter would become a husbandman. Taking this to have been the origin of agriculture, it is of course possible, nay probable, that the cultivation of the soil may have originated in many unconnected countries, and at various times ; but it is remarkable that many peoples, some living in fertile countries, have yet remained in total ignorance of this earliest of the arts to the present day; but then such tribes have either continued to be houseless, wandering savages, whose simple wants are supplied by natural pro- ducts, or, like the Esquimaux, the climate in which they lived has prevented any successful attempt at agriculture. Then again, neither Australia, New Zealand, nor the numerous Pacific Islands would seem to possess any indigenous species of grain, although some of the wild barleys and oats are found in New Zealand, Easter Island, and the West Indies ; and in Australia a grass abounds which they say is neither good for man nor beast, but which yet resembles so much in outward appearance some of our cultivated grasses, that one is tempted to believe that this also might be developed into corn, and even to wonder whether here, in this 84 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. ancient land, we may not trace the origin of some of our cereals. 1 It is, however, generally agreed that we must not look to the southern hemisphere for that development of agricultural skill resulting in the cultivation of the cereals ; for throughout all these scattered lands, agri- culture, where it does exist, consists in the cultivation of roots and trees indigenous to those lands. The growth of the cereals requiring greater skill, represents also a higher stage of development in the races who, from wild originals, brought them into a state fit for the nourishment of man. That all our cereals sprang either spontaneously, or by cultivation from wild originals, cannot be doubted ; but when we find that in the lake dwellings of Switzerland, belonging to the Stone Age, three kinds of wheat, two of barley, and two of millet were certainly known, we are forced to believe that the wild originals of wheat and barley must have merged into the cultivated at an extremely early period in the history of our race, and that the art of agriculture must be of extreme antiquity. 2 This fact is, indeed, testified, not only by the knowledge of the art possessed by the lake dwellers, but by dis- coveries of corn with Egyptian mummies of vast an- tiquity, by traces which have been found, not only of corn, but of the furrows made for the cultivation of it, beneath bogs and peat mosses of great depth, and by the discovery of maize by Mr. Darwin on the coast of Peru, in a raised beach eighty-five feet above sea-level, and in tombs belonging to a race long anterior to the Incas. But the countries producing the wild originals of our cultivated cereals, and therefore by inference the races also to whom we are indebted for their cultivation, remain unknown. 3 1 We find, indeed, that the seeds of this grass (Paniciim Icevinode) are used by the natives of the interior to make a sort of paste, which is described as sweet and palatable. See Tropical Australia, Lieut-Col. Sir T. L. Mitchell, p. 98. 2 See Belt's Naturalist in -Nicaragua, and Rennie on Peat Mosses. 3 General Pitt-Rivers, in his carefully-conducted excavations at Rushmore, found wheat of the Romano-British period, which in PRIMITIVE AGRICULTURE. 85 Mr. Crawford, in pointing out the fact that the names for wheat and barley vary in almost all languages, and that this variation in the names given to the cereals points to their having been independently cultivated in many different localities, says, that in Basque, the names for wheat, barley, and oats are purely Basque, while those for rye, rice, and maize are of Spanish origin. "The inference is," he says, "that the first- named plants were immemorially cultivated by the Basques, and the last only introduced into their country after the Roman conquest of Spain." l The mention of oats among the earlier list would seem to be a confirma- tion of the theory of most archaeologists of the present day, that the Basques are the remnant of that pre- Aryan race to whom we are indebted for the introduc- tion of bronze, since we are told, that oats do not appear in the Swiss lake villages before the age of bronze. Rice would seem to have originated in tropical Asia, and never to have found its way in any considerable quantity into Europe in primitive times, either as an article of commerce or of agriculture. 2 Even now it is very little cultivated, except in Asia, where it forms the food of millions, and in tropical America, where it has been introduced in modern times. It has been commonly accepted as an indisputable fact, that maize is indigenous to America, and was unknown to the eastern hemisphere before the time of Columbus. Whilst, however, allowing, in the absence of proof to the contrary, that America was the native land of this most useful cereal, I cannot think that the date of its introduction to the Old World has, size tallied exactly with some grown on the adjoining land at the present day ; whilst other grains found in British pits on the top of the hill, and evidently grown in an exposed situation, were so long and thin as to be mistaken by farmers to whom they were shown for an admixture of wheat and oats ; but on closer examin- ation they proved to be genuine wheat, though of very poor quality. See Excavations at Rmhmore by General Pitt-Kivers, F.R.S. Vol. I. p. 176. 1 Plants in Reference to Ethnology. Trans. Eth. Soc., vol. v. 2 See Observations as to the probability of its thriving in France, and the Imperial Wheat in Hue's 86 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. as yet, been satisfactorily ascertained. Respecting this plant Mr. Crawford says " Maize is an exclusive product of America, and was as unknown to the Old World before the time of Columbus as tobacco or the pine-apple. With a wider geographical range than any other of the cereals, it has invaded every country of the Old World from the equator to the 50th degree of latitude, and is now the bread of many millions of people whose forefathers lived in ignorance of its existence. It is extensively cultivated in the southern provinces of China, in Japan, and in the islands of the Malay and Philippine Archipelagos. Speke and Grant found it the principal corn in parts of the interior of Africa, which the feet of white man had never trodden before their own; and in Italy and Spain it was a frequent crop within fifty years of the discovery of the New World. This wide and rapid extension, maize owed to its adaptation to diversities of soil and climate, its hardihood, with consequent facility of propagation, and its eminent fecundity." l Mr. Craw- ford elsewhere lays down, as a rule, that where native names are given to cereals, it is a proof that they are indigenous to those countries ; but in applying this rule to maize, he says " The name as known to European nations is taken directly from the Spanish, and it is to be presumed that the conquerors of the New World borrowed it from one of the many languages of that continent. In some of the Oriental languages we have specific names for it, which seem entirely native, such as Ihutta in Hindu, jagung in most of the languages of the Indian Archipelago, katsalva in the Madagascar. This would lead to the belief that the plant was in- digenous where such names are given to it; but the probability is, that they were taken from some native plant bearing a resemblance to maize. Thus in the two principal languages ef Southern India, maize is named after the chief millet cultivated in the peninsula, the cholu or ragi, to which an epithet implying its foreign origin is added. The Turks give it the name 1 Plants in Reference to Ethnology. Trans. Eth. Soc., vol. v. PRIMITIVE AGRICULTURE. 87 of boghdai misr, or the wheat of Egypt, which is not more amiss than the names given by the French and English when they call it Indian and Turkey corn." 1 It does not seem incredible that maize should have been cultivated in Italy and Spain within fifty years of its discovery; but why it should have been called from the first Turkish or Indian corn, requires explana- tion ; neither can we understand how it found its way so quickly into China, Japan, Madagascar, the Malay Archipelago, and all parts of Africa (for it was also found in cultivation at the Cape at its first discovery, even as in the interior by Speke and Grant, and at Angola as recorded by M.r. Monteiro) before any inter- course had been established between those countries and Europe or America. A gentleman from the gold-fields of South Africa informs me, that the Kaffirs beyond the frontier, who will not permit a white man to enter their territory, from the superstitious belief that the destruction of their race would follow immediately in his footsteps, yet cultivate maize largely, and have done so from time immemorial. It may also be interesting to observe that the same people describe minutely gigantic ruins existing in their land, the origin of which they do not know, but which many colonists believe to represent the Ophir of Scripture, but which no European has yet been able thoroughly to explore, so vigilant are the natives. 2 Columbus is said to have introduced maize into Spain in 1520, but it is a singular fact that the old black- letter book, entitled A Niewe Herball, translated by Henry Lyte, Esq., and published in London in 1578, gives a very full description of this plant, but without any reference whatever to its American origin. It is there said, "This grayne groweth in Turkic, wher as it is used in time of dearth." " They do now call this grayne 1 Plants in Reference to Ethnology. Trans. Eth. Soc., vol. v. 2 These ruins are figured in Baines' Gold Regions of South- Eastern Africa, and have lately been more fully described by some members of the British South African Expedition. 88 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. Frumentum Turcicum and Frumentuin Asiaticum; in French Ble de Turquie or Ble Sarazin ; in High Douche, Turkic Korn; in English, Turkish corn or Indian wheat." If we compare with this the following extract from Dr. Daubeny's Lectures on Roman Husbandry (1857), we shall perhaps come to the conclusion that the name Asiaticum for that which we call Turkish or Indian wheat, may not after all be so very far wrong. Dr. Daubeny says, "The names given to wheat by Pliny were far adoreum, halicastrum and zea. Although in modern books on botany the name zea is applied to maize, it certainly could have no relation to that now well-known article of food. For there can be no sort of doubt that maize is indigenous in America, and was not known in Europe till after the discovery of the New World. It is thought, indeed, that it is a native of Paraguay, where a variety is found differing in some respects from the cultivated kind, but not so essentially as to be regarded as a distinct species. Sir Wm. Hooker, however, relates a curious circumstance, namely, that some grains called mummy wheat were sent him from Egypt, which proved to be maize, and maize of that variety which comes from Paraguay. It was reported to have been taken from a mummy, on as good authority perhaps as most of the specimens which have been brought over, a fact that ought to render us cautious in believing the reports of the Arabs in similar cases, for it seems next to certain, that some fraud must here have been practised, as a valuable plant like maize, if ever known in Egypt, could not fail to become general, in a country so well suited for its cultivation. Never- theless, it is certainly curious that it should have been, not the commonly cultivated variety, but the one indi- genous in Paraguay, which was passed off among the contents of an Egyptian tomb." In a note it is explained that " Monsieur Rifault, a French traveller, reports that he obtained these grains of maize himself, from an Egyptian catacomb." 1 In Chambers's Encyclopaedia, 1 Lectures on Roman Hiisbcmdry, by Charles Daubeny, M.D., F.R.S., M.R.I.A., Professor of Botany, Oxford, 1857. PRIMITIVE AGRICULTURE. 89 we are told that although maize is supposed to have been unknown in the Eastern hemisphere before the time of Columbus, yet a representation of the plant is found in an ancient Chinese Book in the Royal Library in Paris, and some grains of it are reported to have been discovered in ancient houses in Athens. Indeed, I feel sure that if archaeologists will look with unpre- judiced eyes, they will yet find representations of this plant among the sculptures of Egypt and Greece. To the objection that had this corn been known to the ancient Egyptians it would have become generally cultivated, it may be answered, that supposing it to have been of foreign origin, the conservatism of the Egyptians would have prevented its speedy adoption, and a land which produced so abundantly the superior grains, wheat and barley, would not be likely to resign them for that which the Niewe Herball says was in 1578 only cultivated in Turkey in time of famine, and of which it proceeds to say " There is as yet no certain experience of the natural vertues of this corne. The bread that is made thereof is drie and harde, having very small fatnesse or moysture, wherefore men may easily judge that it nourisheth little and is evill of digestion." We can, however, readily understand that it would spread quickly, and be a great boon in those tropical lands unsuited for the production of wheat ; but even now, after the experience of centuries, Europeans, except in Spain and Italy, cultivate this grain very sparingly, and rather as food for cattle than man. This question as to the knowledge of maize in the Eastern hemisphere prior to the time of Columbus, is most important in connection with the intercourse which many ethnologists believe can be proved to have existed between the Old World and the New, long ages before the birth of history. With regard to American agriculture, Sir John Lubbock says "American agri- culture was not imported from abroad. This is proved by the fact that the grains of the Old World were entirely absent, and that American agriculture was 90 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. founded upon the maize, an American plant." 1 But to this it may be replied that adventurers from the Old World, whether driven accidentally to the New, or finding themselves there in the course of a voyage of discovery, would not carry with them grain for the purposes of cultivation, but being conversant with the growth of corn, would seize upon that which they found ready to their hand as the basis of their agriculture. Even had they conveyed with them wheat, they would probably have consumed it, or have found it unsuited to the soil of the new country. American legends are unanimous in ascribing the introduction of agriculture to foreigners coming from the sea, who are minutely described as white, bearded men, distinct in race from the aborigines. Both Quetzalcoatl in Mexico, and Manco Capac in Peru, are distinctly venerated as instructors in the art of the cultivation of maize, and although attempts have been made to prove both these to have been sun myths, I believe the balance of probability is in favour of their being real personages, notwithstand- ing the myths which have since accumulated round them; and the truth of the legends relating to the cultivation of maize in America, appears to me to be confirmed by the description given by Sir John Lubbock of the early traces of American agriculture. After describing these traces as consisting of irregular corn-hills, he proceeds to say " But Mr. Lapham has found traces of an earlier and more systematic culti- vation, in low parallel ridges, as if corn had been planted in drills ; they average four feet in width, twenty-five having been counted in the space of one hundred feet, with a walk of about six inches between them ; they are found in the richest soil in patches of different sizes, from twenty to one hundred or even three hundred acres ; they are found in several other parts of the State of Wisconsin, and are called garden-beds. The garden-beds have long been replaced by the irregular corn-hills, yet according to Lapham the former are more modern than 1 Pre-historic Times, 2nd ed. p. 278. PRIMITIVE AGRICULTURE. 91 the mounds, over which they are sometimes carried." Hence Sir John Lubbock traces four long periods " 1st. That in which from an original barbarism the American tribes developed a knowledge of agriculture and a power of combination. 2nd. That in which for the first time mounds were erected and other great works undertaken. 3rd. The age of the garden-beds, which were probably not in use till the mounds had lost their sacred character, or they would not have been used for cultivation. 4th. The period in which man relapsed into partial barbarism, and the spots above- named relapsed into forest once more." 1 Now it is evident from this extract, that three different agricultural systems have prevailed among the civilized races of America ; the latest, that of the irregular corn- hills, belongs without doubt to a comparatively modern period, and to the cultivation of maize, which is still planted in small hillocks by the Americans, and by those who have learnt the cultivation of this grain through them ; the second, that of the garden-beds, which, though much older, yet dates only to a time when the cities of the great mound-builders had already fallen into decay, or when the builders had been sup- planted by a new race, and these garden-beds probably bear witness to the cultivation of some other grain than maize, perhaps a millet, which was certainly cultivated by some American tribes ; whilst of the third or oldest, that under which the mound-builders lived and executed their gigantic works, no traces remain, probably because the agriculture then practised did not include any of the cereals, but consisted solely of roots and plants, such as still constitute the food of the South Sea Islanders, and of the aborigines of many other lands, the wilder and more barbarous tribes con- tenting themselves with such things as grow spontane- ously, whilst the more advanced cultivate such plants as are by them most highly esteemed. The manioc or Jatropha manioc, says Mr. Crawford, formed the principal bread of the rude inhabitants of 1 Pre-historic Times, pp. 274 277. 92 ANTHEOPOLOGICAL STUDIES. native America, who Lad but one of the cereals, and that one not universally known and cultivated. Similar plants, we are told, form the chief food of many African tribes, and there seems to be sufficient evidence to prove, that prior to the knowledge of the cereals, roots, prepared by pounding, maceration, and deselection, formed the universal food of the human race, and that the cereals were everywhere introduced by new and superior races, who had by some means acquired a knowledge of them in the land of their nativity. There is a singular passage in Herodotus, which tells us of a time when the Egyptians lived in this primeval state on roots and fruits. After enumerating a great many points in which the Egyptians differ from other nations, he writes " Others feed on wheat and barley, but it is a very great disgrace for an Egyptian to make food of them, but they make bread from spelt, which some call zea" l And later he says of those who live in the morasses " But to obtain food more easily they have the following inventions : when the river is full, and has made the plains like a sea, great numbers of lilies, which the Egyptians call lotus, spring up in the water ; these they gather and dry in the sun, then having pounded the middle of the lotus, which resembles a poppy, they make bread of it and bake it. The root also of this lotus is fit for food, and is tolerably sweet, and is round and of the size of an apple. There are also other lilies, like roses, that grow in the river, the fruit of which is contained in a separate pod, that springs up from the root in form very like a wasp's nest ; in this there are many berries fit to be eaten, of the size of an olive-stone, and they are eaten both fresh and dried. The byblus, which is an annual plant, when they have pulled it up in the fens, they cut off the top of it and put to some other uses, but the lower part that is left, to the length of a cubit, they eat and sell. Those who are anxious to eat the byblus dressed in the most delicate manner, stew it in a hot pan and then eat it." It is somewhat singular that not only do the 1 Herodotus, Bk. ii. 92 and 36, Gary's ed. PRIMITIVE AGRICULTURE. 93 Egyptians resemble the Chinese in many of those points in which Herodotus points out their difference from other men, but also in the food thus consumed pre- sumably by the lower classes, for M. Hue says " Water- lilies, yellow, white, red, and pink, are much cultivated ; the seeds are eaten as nuts, and boiled in sugar and water; the root is always excellent and wholesome however cooked, whether pickled with salt and vinegar to eat with rice, or reduced to powder and boiled with milk or water, it is very agreeable, or eaten raw like fruit." l Thus we see that in the two countries noted above all others for the cultivation of the cereals, there are evident traces of a time when the aborigines lived as savages do now upon roots. Root-eater, we are told, among the Malays is a term of contempt equivalent to barbarian, and doubtless it acquired this significance from the fact that the aborigines everywhere, either from old custom or from superstition, prefer the food of their forefathers. Thus we find even to the present day, the natives of Australia and the South Sea Islands prefer their taro, yams, and manioc to the cereals, which, although now long familiar to them, are not extensively cultivated by them. Perhaps the record of the sums expended in purchasing radishes, onions, and garlic for the builders of the Great Pyramid, and the absence of all mention of corn, may also be adduced as a proof of the truth of the statement of Herodotus, the luxuries above-named being doubtless supplemented by the abundant lotus crop of the Nile. But then the question arises, what became of the vast quantity of corn grown in Egypt ? It was, doubtless, partly consumed by the sacerdotal and military castes ; much was stored, as we know, for seasons of scarcity ; and much, perhaps, was exported in exchange for such articles of luxury as Egypt did not produce, until gradually but surely the taste for bread became universal among them, even as, among ourselves, wheat has only gradu- ally, and within the last century, entirely superseded 1 Hue's Chinese Empire. 94 ANTHEOPOLOGICAL STUDIES. the barley, rye, and oat bread familiar to our ancestors, and which is still eaten in Germany, Russia, and Scotland. It is a point especially worthy of note that races, however low they may be in the scale of humanity, have yet learnt to prepare native plants, many of them of a poisonous nature, and others of an acrid and un- pleasant taste, by soaking them long in water, by pounding and drying them so as to extract the un- wholesome matter, whilst retaining the starch, which they then make into a paste and either bake or boil, but chiefly the latter. Du Halde tells us that the wheaten bread of the Chinese is chiefly prepared by boiling. 1 Even our Saxon ancestors retained a memory of the arts of savage life in the food they prepared from acorns, by pounding and soaking them long in water, to remove that bitterness which would seem to us to render them hopelessly unpalatable. 2 The three nations of antiquity most celebrated for their knowledge of agriculture, confining that term to the cultivation of the cereals, are China, Egypt, and Peru, but in each of these there are traces of a time when these cereals were unknown, and in each their introduction is distinctly ascribed to individuals who are likewise the founders of the nation, and of the highly-developed civilization subsequently attained. In China this teacher of agriculture was not Fohi, but the second emperor, or head of the second dynasty ; some historians reckoning seventeen emperors between him and Fohi. The annals of China, indeed, seem to bear out in a remarkable manner the theory of the gradual development of civilization insisted on by modern eth- nologists. In the time of Fohi, men are represented as differing but little from brutes, devouring every part of an animal, drinking the blood, and clothing themselves with skins; but Fohi taught them to make nets for 1 Du Halde's Hist, of Chiiia. 2 The fact that maize becomes more wholesome and palatable after long soaking in water and boiling, may perhaps account for its common use among the lower races. PRIMITIVE AGRICULTURE. 95 fishing, and to bring up domestic animals for food and sacrifice ; also he instructed them in music, and to use the eight koua, or symbols of three lines each, instead of the quipus or knotted cords ; he also regulated the laws of marriage, forbidding a man to marry a woman of his own name, whether related or not. Then Chin-nong introduced agriculture, inventing the necessary imple- ments of husbandry, and teaching the people to sow five sorts of grain ; and this he did, it is said, because the people had greatly increased, and the plants and animals were not sufficient for them. From hence he was called Chin-nong, which signifies Heavenly Husbandman. The five kinds of grain introduced by Chin- nong are still sown yearly by the Chinese Emperor at the great agricultural feast; they are wheat, 1 rice, millet, beans, and another kind of millet called Cao leang, which is, I understand, that sort of corn called Guinea corn, or Caffre corn, which is so widely culti- vated in Asia and Africa; but Du Halde probably speaks of maize when, in describing the second govern- ment of Tartary, he says " They have in particular a great quantity of millet, and a sort of grain unknown amongst us, called by the Chinese of the country mai- se-mi, as being of a middle species between wheat and rice, but whatever its proper name be, it is of a good taste and in great request in these cold countries. It would, perhaps, thrive in some places in Europe, where no other grain will." 2 In Egypt the inventor of the art of agriculture was Menes, the first earthly monarch ; in Peru it was Manco Capac, whose wife and sister, Mama Oello, was the instructress in the arts of spinning and weaving. The analogies to be traced between the civilizations of these three countries are too numerous to be noticed here, but it must be observed that the great festival of the search for Osiris appears in China, where it is referred to a much-esteemed Mandarin who was drowned, and 1 Du Halde's History of China, vol. i. p. 270 et seq. ; vol. iv. p. 94. 2 Ibid. vol. i. p. 270. 96 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. in whose honour a yearly feast was instituted with small gilt barks moving on the waters in search of the Man- darin, with sports, feasts, and fights upon the river. 1 The feast also of Isis is represented, but, as it would appear, in the form of a survival. On the day that the sun enters the fifteenth degree of Aquarius, which is the commencement of spring, a feast is held in honour of husbandry and celebrated husbandmen ; numerous figures in connection with this art are carried in pro- cession, and among them a huge cow of clay, so large that forty men can with difficulty carry it ; behind this cow, whose horns are gilt, is a young child with one foot naked and the other covered, representing the genius of labour and diligence. The child strikes the earthen cow without ceasing with a rod, as if to drive her for- wards. She is followed by all the husbandmen with musical instruments, and by companies of masquers. At the governor's palace this cow is broken in pieces, and the fragments, with a number of small cows taken from the larger one, are distributed to the multitude, whilst the governor makes a discourse in praise of husbandry. 2 The evident connection between this cere- mony and the festival of Isis represented in Greece by the wanderings of lo, and its analogies in Indian mythology, must strike every ethnologist, and there is one point in it of peculiar interest, which is its con- nection with moon-worship in reference to agriculture. It has been said by Sir John Lubbock that agricultur- ists worship the sun, and hunters the moon ; this, how- ever, is only partially true, for we find among agricultural races a triad representing the sun, the moon, and the earth. Wherever stone or brick pyramids are found, and it must be remarked that they are found only among agricultural, and, therefore, semi-civilized, races, the largest is dedicated to the sun and the second to the moon. Moon-worship in America Mr. Bancroft appears to assign to a later date than sun-worship, and thinks it has reference to that crescent land from which so many of the American tribes derive their mythical 1 Du Halde's History of China, vol. i. p. 210. 2 Ibid. vol. ii. p. 119. PRIMITIVE AGRICULTURE. 97 origin ; but in China, in Egypt, and throughout the east, the moon appears to have been the older deity, and to stand out distinctly as the especial goddess of agriculture. 1 The importance of the sun and the earth to agriculturists is easily understood, but why the moon should hold so prominent a position as the female or productive element in nature is not so clear. In our cold northern clime we have come to look upon the moon simply as a light-giver and regulator of the tides, and to regard the ancient belief in her influence upon vegetation as a superstition long exploded ; neverthe- less it would appear that in warmer climates the influ- ence of the moon is not altogether mythical. A gentleman long resident in the West Indies informs me that the growth of the sugar-cane during moonlight nights so greatly exceeds that which takes place when the moon is not visible, that planters arrange their plantings so as to secure moonlight for the young canes. The knowledge of this fact probably regulated the great agricultural feast in China, which was always on the twenty-third day of the moon, thus securing to the young plants the full influence of the moon during the early stages of their growth. The observant Chinese also attach great importance to a fact unknown to us, namely, that some sorts of grain flower invariably by night, and others by day. 2 The sign taught to Chinese children as symbolical of the moon is a rabbit pounding rice in a mortar, 3 and this sign, when compared with the prominence given to the rabbit in American sculp- tures and hieroglyphics, seems an additional argument in favour of a connection between the hemispheres in prehistoric times, especially if, as Buff on says, that animal is not a native of America. It appears eight times on each face of the pyramid of Xochicalco (Mexico), in conjunction with other unexplained 1 It would appear to me that moon-worship originated with agriculturists, and sun-worship with metallurgists. 2 See Du Halde, vol. iii. p. 2. 3 Among some aboriginal tribes in India the word for moon is the same as that for hare and roebuck. H 98 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. signs. 1 Bancroft reports it as among the rock carvings of Utah, and it forms the first sign of the Mexican calendar, the close resemblance of which to those of China and Tartary, has always been held as a strong argument for former intercourse between the widely- separated peoples using them. I believe it may be proved that the introduction of the arts of civilization, and particularly that of metal- lurgy, may be traced to a race of sun and serpent worshippers, having strong affinities with the Chinese, Egyptians, and ancient Accadians, a race which it is the custom to term Turanian. This race, which, however it may be denominated, was certainly pre-Aryan, may, I believe, be credited with having carried the seeds of useful knowledge over the earth within a certain zone. Agriculture, weaving, pottery, pyramidal structures, and metallurgy may be attributed to them, although of course it does not necessarily follow, that all these arts were invented at once, or spread at the same time over the surface of the globe, but the strong resemblances to be traced everywhere in the primitive stages of these arts, and the peculiar religion which invariably accom- panies them, of which I shall treat later, in which the serpent and human sacrifices play a prominent part, seem to point unmistakably to the influence of one race, whilst everywhere may be traced, beneath the originators of this peculiar civilization, one or more aboriginal races, treated by the superior, or dominant caste, as slaves or outcasts, yet retaining always their'own superstitions, their own customs, and even, as has been sliown, their own food, which in some cases appears to have been prohibited to the newer race, as, according to the statement of Herodotus, beans were forbidden to the priestly caste in Egypt, although forming the chief food of the abori- gines there, as they did also in America and South Africa. 2 Pythagoras also forbade beans to his followers, deriving his notions from Egypt. 1 See also Tylor's Anahuac ; and Bancroft's Native Races of the Pacific. 2 The Kafirs still cultivate sparingly a peculiar bean which once formed a staple article of food among them. PRIMITIVE AGRICULTURE. 99 A dissertation upon primitive agriculture would evi- dently be incomplete without some notice of the modes of agriculture and the implements employed in early times. Singularly enough, although ears of corn, grain of so many kinds, and even seeds of raspberries, have been distinguished among the relics of the Swiss lake dwellers, hitherto no agricultural implements have been discovered. It is probable that the implements em- ployed by early agriculturists were of the simplest form possible that, in fact, they were only pointed sticks used to scratch the surface of the ground. Such sticks, used as picks or hoes, are represented on Egyptian monuments ; and pointed sticks are still the sole imple- ments of some savage tribes ; although they appear to be used by them somewhat differently from the Egyptian sarcle. The Bushmen use a stick loaded with a perforated stone for digging ; and in a notice of New Guinea, by the Rev. S. Macfarlane, as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, of May 27, we find " A large plot of land is turned over very systematically and quickly by a number of men standing in a row, with a pointed stick in each hand, which they raise and plunge into the ground simultaneously, and then use them as so many levers to turn over the soil. It is surprising how quickly they can turn over an acre of soil in this way." Bancroft describes the nearest approach to the plough among the Nahua natives of America, as being sticks, often tipped with copper, and there can be no doubt that the primitive plough was simply a pointed stick dragged through the ground by men, so as to form a furrow. Such a plough is represented on the Egyptian monuments, differing from the sarcle only in having a cross-piece of wood for a handle, to which was attached ropes whereby it was dragged along by four men. The old Roman plough was but little better than this, excepting that the share was of metal, and even to the present day in India, China, and it may be said the whole of Asia, the ploughs used differ very slightly from the early Egyptian type. In America, we are 100 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. told, that the natives still use, without improvement, the old Roman plough as introduced by the Spaniards, whilst in South Africa ploughs were unknown until the advent of Europeans, and are only just coming into use among the natives, whose sole agricultural implement, in addition to the digging-sticks described above, was the hoe, an implement described by Burchell as re- sembling the adze or pecklo, but larger, which the women, who alone till the ground, raise above their heads, bringing it down with great force upon the hard sun-baked earth, thus merely breaking the earth irregularly, and putting in the seed. The hoe described by Mr. Monteiro as the sole agricultural implement in use among the natives of Angola, 1 where also women are the only agriculturists, is made of iron, resembling an oyster-shell in shape, with a short spike burnt into the knobbed stick which serves as a handle, and some of these are made with a double handle, so as to be used by two women at once. These hoes strongly remind one of the Mexican axes described by Tylor, 2 who says that, notwithstanding the skill displayed in knife and arrow making, the Mexicans " never discovered the art of making a hole in a stone hammer. The handles of the axes shown in the picture- writing are clumsy sticks, swelling into a large knob at one end, and the axe-blade is fixed into a hole in this knob." Dr. John Evans, in his work on Ancient Stone Implements, has pointed out that it is probable that many of the so-called stone celts, especially those of large size, may have been hafted in this manner, and used as hoes ; but if the implements of the Swiss lake- dwellers were as simple as those described, it would be difficult after so many ages to distinguish the pointed stick used for ploughing or pecking up the soil from those used in the construction of their dwellings. It also appears possible that the innumerable flint flakes found among pre-historic relics may have been used in a 1 See Angola and the River Congo ; J . Monteiro, and Burchell's South Africa. 2 Tylor's Anahuac. PRIMITIVE AGRICULTURE. 101 wooden frame, as they still are in the tribulum of the East, and as Dr. Daubeny 1 tells us they were used in Gaul at the time of the Roman Conquest, as harrows or threshing-machines. The same writer also describes a large hollow frame armed with teeth, which served the purpose of a modern reaping-machine, and which may likewise have represented a pre-historic implement. Mr. Flinders Petrie has recently discovered in Egypt a primitive sickle, consisting of a wooden frame resembling a jawbone, into which has been inserted a number of sharp flint flakes like a saw. The employment of women in agricultural pursuits seems to have been continued from superstitious motives in semi-civilized countries, and prevails even now in China. According to M. Hue, 2 it is no uncom- mon sight to see a plough drawn by a woman, her husband walking behind to guide it, whilst the great agricultural festival in China, the use of terraces on the mountain sides, and the attention paid to irrigation, serve to connect the agricultural systems of China and Peru so closely, that Mr. Tylor appears to ascribe these usages in Peru to a Chinese colony. The use of ridges in agriculture seems to have been universal. Not only do they distinguish the garden-beds in America, but Rennie describes them as underlying peat mosses in Scotland, where wheat cannot now be grown ; and Dr. Daubeny tells us that among the Romans the corn was sown on ridges in wet soils, and between them on dry soils. 3 The American corn-hills, described as used for the cultivation of maize, seems to be peculiar to that country, and although they have been adopted by some Europeans at the Cape, the natives still sow maize on level ground ; nevertheless Mr. Monteiro describes the use of little hillocks in Angola for planting the mandioca. 4 1 Six Lectures on Roman Husbandry: Chas. Daubeny, M.D.. F.R.S., &c. 2 Hue's Chinese Empire, ii. p. 303. 3 Daubeny's Lectures on Roman Husbandry, and Rennie on Peat Mosses. 4 See Angola and the River Congo, p. 205, J. Monteiro. 102 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. It is a difficult task to gather up the scattered threads presented to us by the study of Primitive Agriculture, but the somewhat meagre facts I have been able to collect appear to me to confirm the general conclusions of modern ethnologists. We see everywhere primitive man, a naked savage, devoid of every art excepting those necessary to self-preservation, his first improvements being the manufacture of imple- ments of war and the chase. Man in this condition would seem to have spread gradually over the whole earth, for his relics are found everywhere, and his descendants, still in the same state of utter barbarism, are found in many outlying lands which have been cut off by changes in the conformation of the land from communication with races who have gradually acquired civilization ; and may also be traced in low and outcast tribes down-trodden by conquering hordes. The origin of civilization, like the origin of races, remains an unsolved problem. From the similarity to be traced in the monuments, myths, customs, and religions of all early civilized or semi-civilized peoples, I have been led to the conclusion that it was never independently acquired, but was the result of constant intercommunication by channels long since become im- practicable, and when this intercommunication ceased, we find civilization arrested, as in America and China, and only continually and increasingly developed among nations who from war and commerce have kept up con- tinual and constant intercourse with each other. There can be little doubt that the first great stimulus to civilization was given when man, driven by necessity, began to till the ground. The first successful efforts in this direction would lead naturally to others; but roots and fruits were evidently cultivated long before the cereals, and this early stage of agricultural knowledge is still represented among the South Sea Islanders, and among some of the lower aboriginal peoples of Asia, Africa, and America, although it is vain to conjecture when and where it first arose. The cultivation of the cereals, however, represents a PRIMITIVE AGRICULTURE.. 103 great advance in agricultural skill; but that this also was acquired at a very early period, the records of Egypt and China, and the relics from the Swiss lake-dwellings sufficiently prove; and that it was not acquired inde- pendently by the lake-dwellers is evident from the identity of the corn found with that grown in Egypt. The independent acquirement of agriculture in America has been affirmed by many, but I venture to believe it to be not yet proven. The absence of wheat and barley prove nothing, for the earlier civilizations of America were confined to tropical and semi-tropical regions, where these grains if introduced would not supersede maize, which there grows to perfection. It must not, however, be forgotten that all American legends and legends usually have some basis of fact unite in ascribing the cultivation of maize, as well as other customs wherein the civilized races of America resemble the ancient civilized races of the Eastern hemisphere, to foreign civilizers entering the country from the sea; and if maize be indeed indigenous to America, its pre- sence in Asia and Africa prior to the time of Columbus, if proved, as I believe it can be, would go far to establish the fact of an intercourse subsisting between the hemi- spheres in prehistoric times. Nor must we forget, that the absence of cereal agriculture in those islands which may be supposed to represent the ancient stepping- stones between the continents, may be accounted for, by prejudice and superstition, since the natives even now grow cereals very sparingly, whilst the cultivation of maize among races quite as low in the human scale in Africa, Madagascar, and New Guinea, would seem to point to the plant as a native of those regions as well as America, or to the extreme antiquity of its introduction to the Eastern hemisphere. CHAPTER VIII. THE SERPENT IN CONNECTION WITH METALLURGY. Metallurgy next to Agriculture as a Civilizing Agent Gold the first Metal used The Use of Copper Commercial Inter- course consequent upon Metallurgy Serpent Worship The Good Serpent always connected with the Precious Metals Totemic Origin Do they really store Glittering Things? The Nagas of India and of Egypt Cadmus Quetzalcoatl Osiris Silver Smelted Metal probably unknown Indian Legend Melted Gold conferring Immortality The Serpent Myth in America Atlantis. NEXT to a knowledge of agriculture, which can be traced back to neolithic times, the metallurgic arts have been the most potent aids to the civilization of mankind. Undoubtedly gold was the first metal known, and its use may date back to the Stone age, for as it is found in a pure state in many countries, it would probably be seized upon for ornamental purposes by savages, who would soon learn that it might be beaten into shape with a stone hammer ; but, singularly enough, the first definite traces of metallurgy show the art in an advanced stage, in which the metal used was bronze a compound metal requiring much skill in the manu- facture, and a considerable commerce to obtain the copper and tin necessary for making it ; and this pre- supposes a knowledge of the art of navigation, for copper and tin are not to be found everywhere, and there is reason to suppose that the early workers in bronze, coming from the East or from the shores of the Medi- terranean, sought their tin in Britain, and carried the knowledge of the art of smelting and welding metals over a considerable part of the world. SERPENT IN CONNECTION WITH j METALLURGY. 105 Archaeologists look back to a period before the age of bronze, in -which pure copper was used, beaten out, and not smelted or mixed with alloy ; and it is indeed found that some of the earlier metal implements classed as bronze consist in reality of unalloyed copper, the requisite strength being obtained by beating together several thin layers of metal and lapping over the edges. This, which may be regarded as the earliest form of metal work, is found in some of the Swiss lake- dwellings ; also among those curious discoveries recently made in Spain by the Belgian brothers Siret ; among the Egyptian finds of Mr. Flinders Petrie, as well as in American mounds, and among the Eskimo. It is with these early metal workers that we first meet with that singular and very wide-spread religion known as serpent worship. Among the very early hunters and cave-dwellers of paleolithic and neolithic times there is no prominence given to the serpent, although, as I shall show later, they do not appear to have beejjr wholly destitute of religion. But presently from these caves emerges the serpent not a thing of evil, carrying with it death and destruction, but a bright and glorious form adorned with a royal crown of glittering gems ; and as he glides majestically over the earth man follows in his track no longer the wild hunter, content with rude stone weapons of the chase, but before him he pushes the ploughshare deep into the bosom of the virgin soil. In his hand he bears a metal sickle wherewith to reap the primal harvest, and turning his eyes to the bright luminary above him, he bends his knee and worships the source of light and life, and says to the stones beneath his feet, " Ye are like my earth-mother of old, dark and sterile, until the bright sun-god looked upon her and sent his messenger the serpent to teach her children wisdom." Little as we know of the religion and habits of thought of our remote ancestors, the innumerable legends which have descended to us in which the serpent plays an important part, cannot fail to strike us 106 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. as very remarkable, especially when we note the strange persistency with which he and the gods, of whom he is the emblem, are associated with agriculture, wealth, power, honour, gold, and gems ; and strange to say, the deeper we delve into this mysterious past, the more numerous and important do these serpent legends become, bringing to our view whole tribes who were supposed to be half serpents kings and heroes of semi- serpentine descent, and gods either serpentine in form, or bearing the serpent as a sacred symbol ; and it is a strange fact that all these gods and men thus singularly connected with the serpent have also always some in- explicable relation to precious stones, the precious metals, the dawn of science and of agriculture. The mediaeval dragon was always the guardian of hidden treasures in classical times ; it was the dragon who guarded the golden apples of the Hesperides, and the semi-serpent Cerberus watched over Hades, the kingdom of Pluto and realm of wealth. Going back farther still, we find Hoa, one of the chief of the Chaldsean gods, whose emblem is a serpent, called also the layer-up of treasure. Indra, the old aboriginal god of India, is worshipped to this day as the giver of wealth, which wealth is guarded by serpents. Kneph and Osiris in Egypt, both symbolized by serpents, are also gods of wealth ; the former represented as the potter forming Hephaestus or Vulcan; whilst in the far-off region of Mexico, Quetzalcoatl, the serpent, is regarded as having taught metallurgy and agriculture to the people. When, therefore, we find in so many widely remote nations traces of unaccountable reverence for a deadly reptile, and side by side with it evident signs of the rudiments of metallurgy blended with traditions which, however distorted, may yet be deemed a survival of pre- historic beliefs, and which all point to the serpent as the revealer of knowledge and the guardian of hidden treasure, we may, I think, assume that in some mysterious manner the serpent had something to do with the first knowledge of metals. The animals revered of old were SERPENT IN CONNECTION WITH METALLURGY. 107 those which had in various degrees rendered themselves useful to man; and it seems unreasonable to suppose that this deadly reptile would have been exalted to so high a place in the mythology of all nations, unless he had rendered some service to mankind. The vener- ation for the serpent doubtless originated in an age of Totemism, when animals were invested with human attributes, and the clan to which they were sacred, looked upon themselves as in some sort their children, calling themselves snakes, or eagles, or stags, according to the totem adopted. It appears to me not improbable that the first to adopt the serpent as a totem may have been led by some dream to find treasures of gold and gems in a cave, in which he also found the snake apparently guarding the treasure, and hence the persistent stories handed down from generation to generation, for who can say how many centuries, in which the serpent is always represented as the guardian of hidden treasure in every country to which that early serpent tribe conveyed the knowledge of metals. Whether snakes, like some other animals, do really hoard glittering objects, I do not know, and the only notice of such a propensity I have met with, is the following from Beaufort's Egyptian Sepulchres and Syrian Shrines "There was an old hag of a woman at Tadmor, much thought of because she had twice made the pilgrimage to Mecca. One day when she saw rne busy cleaning a pretty pebble I had found, she began, ' Oh, lady ! I have found something much prettier than that ; it must needs be a stone belonging to some jinns, for I never saw anything like it before. She told us that she had been out one day among the ruins of Zenobia's palace about midday, when the sun being very hot, she sat down by a low wall to rest. Presently she heard the hissing of serpents close to her, ami turning her head to look over the wall, she saw at a few yards off two serpents fighting ; their heads were curved far back as their bodies glided and wriggled about facing each other ; and every now and then they would dart 108 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. like lightning one at the other, each trying to seize his enemy's head. At last one gave the other a mortal bite, and he fell prostrate and bleeding on the sand. Then she made a noise, and the victor glided frightened away, while she went to look at the dead snake, curious to see for what they had been fighting. And lo ! out of his mouth came the apple of discord this little white stone ! ' and she opened her hand and showed me a large round pearl, a costly one in any place, but doubly valuable with this marvellous tale attached to it." * The Bedouins did not know it was a jewel, nor had any of them ever seen a pearl before. The Sheikh said, that although the old woman was a great rhodomontader, he did not think the story of the serpents untrue, for he had himself more than once seen serpents fighting in the manner she described, for some such article as a bit of stone." 2 Old Indian sculptures represent Krisna standing upon the conquered serpent holding a gem in his hand, as though that had been the prize of victory, whilst a ball or gem of the same kind adorns the head of the snake ; and the sacred snake of the Mexicans is similarly adorned. Perhaps also the Druidical serpent's egg and the Popo beads of Dahome may point to the fondness of snakes for glittering objects. In any case it seems clear that the first metal workers belonged to that ancient pre- Aryan race denominated Turanian ( but perhaps more correctly Mongoloid,) for it is among Mongolian races that reverence for the serpent or dragon is, and always has been, carried to excess. China and Japan may be quoted as examples of this at the present day, but ancient legends tell the same tale 1 Beaufort's Egyptian Sepulchres and Syrian Shrines, p. 390. 2 The following, from Three Generations of English Women, vol. ii. p. 187, seems to denote a natural tendency in snakes to appropriate gold and gems. The tame snake '' was fond of glitter- ing things, and when Lucie (i. e. Lady Duff Gordon) took her many rings off her fingers, and placed them on different parts of the table, it would go about collecting them, stringing them on its lithe body, and finally tying itself into a tight knot, so that the rings could not be recovered till it chose to untie itself." SERPENT IN CONNECTION WITH METALLURGY. 109 of India, at that remote epoch when the Aryans crossed the Himalayas and swarmed into those great cities inhabited by tribes who were certainly not savages, but were skilful metal workers, especially in gold. Amongst these may be specially noticed a tribe calling themselves Nagas, or snakes. These Nagas are repre- sented in all the old Indian sculptures and paintings, with snakes springing from their shoulders, and forming a canopy over the head of the king. They appear to have long continued a powerful tribe, for when the Buddha of history (B.C. 640 or 560, or according to Hue, 960) is required to prove his divine mission in presence of the gods, two Naga kings, who seem to have become converts, presented him with a thousand-leaved lotus, the size of a cart-wheel, all of gold, with a stalk of diamond, 1 upon which Buddha seated himself, and hence is denominated the " Gem in the lotus." In vol. iii. of Asiatic Researches, we find "The king of serpents (Nagas) reigned in Chacragiri, but the Garudas (Ruchs) having conquered the Nagas, had a serpent every day for dinner, which Garuda, the eagle or Roc, obliged the king, of serpents to supply. The place where the royal snake resided had the name of Catima, not far from which was the mountain called brilliant, from the precious metals and gems with which it abounded ; hence say the Hindoo writers, ' They who perform yearly and daily rites in honour of Sancha Naga will acquire immense riches.' " There are legends of a similar race under the same name in Africa. The Universal History says "After the reign of the gods and demi-gods in Egypt, and the kings of the cynic cycle, came another race denomin- ated nekyes (Nagas ?), a title implying royal, splendid, glorious." The mountains of snakes mentioned by Nubian geographers, were named Ophiusa by the Greeks, doubtless the Ophir of Scripture, which sometimes signified the whole of Africa. The Greek legend of Cadmus is of especial interest in connection with this subject. Cadmus, whose name 1 Mrs. Spiers' Life, in Ancient India. 110 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. signifies the East, we are told came to Boeotia, where he slew a dragon sacred to Mars, which guarded a well ; and by the advice of Athena sowed the monster's teeth, from which sprang armed men, who destroyed each other, until he taught them the art of agriculture, and formed them into a peaceful colony; he and his wife were afterwards transformed into serpents, and were worshipped in that form. Now I would read this story as a very simple allegory, in which Cadmus, with a few followers coming into Greece, either from Phoenicia, Egypt, or India, and finding himself opposed by a warlike aboriginal race, at first overcame them by the superior weapons at his command, and afterwards taught them the use of those weapons, whereupon they turned their arms against each other, and were almost exterminated before he succeeded in teaching them a nobler and more peaceful use for their newly acquired knowledge. Cadmus vanquishing with the plough the dragon of Mars, is a favourite subject in Etruscan tombs, and it is somewhat significant that to him is ascribed the first working of the mines of Pangeaon in Thrace, and he is reputed to have taught mining, as well as agriculture and writing, to the Greeks. Another Greek semi-serpentine divinity associated with the introduction of metallurgy and agriculture, is Triptolemus, the son of Demeter, the earth goddess ; and many others, as Cecrops and Draco, might be adduced. 1 Quetzalcoatl, the Mexican serpent deity, 2 is repre- sented as a benefactor who had taught the Aztecs the use and art of manufacturing metals, of which he wore a shining helmet on his head. He also taught them how to cultivate maize, of which a single ear was a load 1 See Smith's Classical Dictionary: Articles, "Cadmus"; "Demeter"; "Triptolemus." 2 In the curious Mexican mosaics in the Christy collection the sacred serpents are carefully marked out with beads of gold, and Torquemada says the images of the three great Mexican gods were each of a golden serpent ; whilst in the mounds of the West, among many sculptured serpents discovered, there was one carefully enveloped in sheet copper. SERPENT IN CONNECTION WITH METALLURGY. Ill for a man, and instructed them in the cutting of gems. 1 In Peru, Manco Capac and Mama Oello, sent by the sun to teach men the arts of agriculture, were to settle where a golden wedge they carried, sank into the ground ; which legend, compared with that of the Chaldsean deity Hoa, whose emblems were a wedge and a serpent, is certainly remarkable. The name of Osiris, too, the agricultural god of Egypt, whose emblem is the serpent, is derived, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, from Oshir, which signified gold. But it would appear to me that these early men-serpents, when they first quitted their Indian or Egyptian home, to scatter the seeds of civilization over the benighted West, were not acquainted with the art of smelting metals, or with that combination forming bronze, after- wards so universally used. Gold, silver, and copper, the three metals most commonly found in a pure state, were doubtless the first to come under the notice of mankind. Max Miiller points out that what makes it probable that iron was not known before the separation of the Aryan nations is, that the name for it is different in every one of their languages, whilst Sanskrit, Greek, the Teutonic and Slavonic languages, agree in their names for gold ; Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, in the names for silver ; Sanskrit, Latin, and German, in their names for the third metal, probably copper. 2 Silver, however, seems to have been very little used in pre-historic times, although the large quantity of this metal found in the tombs explored by M. M. Siret, 1 Prescott's Peru. 2 There is a legend in Grimm belonging to the Iron age which is interesting, as connecting the serpent not only with gold, but with man's soul or spirit, and the curious superstition which makes a running stream an impassable barrier to supernatural beings. The story runs " King Gunthram lay in a wood asleep, with his head in his faithful henchman's lap. The servant saw as it were a snake issue from his lord's mouth and run to the brook, but it could not pass. So the servant laid his sword across the water, and the creature ran across it and up into a mountain. After a while it came back and returned into the mouth of the sleeping king, who waking, told how he had dreamt that he went over an iron bridge into a mountain full of gold." 112 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. in South-east Spain, proves that it was well known and much used by the unknown dwellers in that region. Although it seems probable that the early serpent race, who presumably taught the use of metals, were not acquainted with the art of smelting those metals, yet there is a curious legend in the Mahabbarata l connect- ing serpents with smelted metals. This is related in the third Avater of Vishnu in the form of a tortoise, and is thus given in Maurice's History of Hindostan " The good genii, wishing to obtain the amrita or water of life, went before Brahma and Vishnu, and requested their help to remove the mountain Mandar, wherewith to churn the ocean. Then he with the lotos-eye directed the king of serpents to appear. Anata, the serpent king, arose, and instructed by Narayen (Vishnu), took up the mountain and carried it to the ocean with all its inhabitants, and the Soors (good genii) accom- panied him into the presence of the Ocean, whom they thus addressed ' We will stir up thy waters to obtain the amrita ' ; and the Ocean replied, ' Let me also have a share, seeing I am to bear the violent agitation caused by the whirling of the mountain.' Then the Soors (good) and the Assoors (evil genii) spake unto Courma- rajah, i.e. Vishnu, king of the tortoises, and said, 'My lord is able to be the supporter of this mountain,' who replied, ' Be it so/ and it was placed upon his back. So the mountain, placed on the back of the tortoise, was whirled by Indra like a machine." The mountain Mandar served as a churn, 2 and the serpent Vasookee for the rope, and thus the waters of the ocean were stirred up for the discovery of the amrita. The Assoors were employed at the serpent's head, and the Soors at his tail, whilst Anata stood by Narayen. The serpent thus pulled violently backwards and forwards, vomited forth a continual stream of fire and smoke and wind, which ascending in thick clouds mingled with lightning, began to rain down upon the 1 The Mahabbarata is supposed to be 4000 years old. 2 Maurice's Hindostan. This churn is identified by Mr. Tylor with the early implement for fire-making. SERPENT IN CONNECTION WITH METALLURGY. 113 labourers, already fatigued with their exertions. The roaring of the ocean so violently agitated was like the bellowing of a mighty cloud. Thousands of the produc- tions of the water were torn to pieces and confounded with the briny flood, and all the inhabitants of the great abyss below the earth were annihilated, whilst the forest trees were smitten together, with the birds thereon, and from their friction fire was produced, covering the mountain with smoke. The fire is at length quenched by a shower of cloud-borne water poured down by the immortal Indra ; and now a heterogeneous stream of the concocted juice of various trees and plants ran down into the briny flood. It was from this milk-like stream of juices and a mixture of melted gold, that the Soors obtained their immortality. With regard to the discovery of the art of smelting metals, it may be observed that many old geographers attribute it to a violent conflagration, which melted the ores, and caused them to flow down pure. In what way the art of metal working, with its distinctive serpent legends, was conveyed to America is an unsolved problem. 1 Many great ethnologists, and amongst them Mr. Darwin, have denied that the civilization of remote lands, and particularly that of Mexico and Peru, can be ascribed to wanderers from civilized lands, adducing in proof of their belief the small progress made by modern missionaries ; but we must remember that Christian missionaries teach an invisible God, an abstraction not readily comprehended, whilst these ancient sun and serpent worshippers could point to the bright luminary above, and the deadly reptile at their feet, as visible and powerful divinities. We all know that the early success of Cortez in Mexico was due to his having been looked upon by the simple Aztecs as their great serpent- 1 It may be observed that although the serpent myth does not seem fully developed in the South Sea Islands, where when dis- covered metals were unknown, yet in the Tonga and Fiji islands, in which there are traces of a race of superior civilization prior to the present inhabitants, we find a divinity worshipped half stone, half serpent. 114 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. god and benefactor, Quetzalcoatl, whose return they were expecting. It certainly seems more reasonable to suppose that the seeds of knowledge were implanted by strangers according to the traditions of the people, than that they should have acquired independently a mythology, astro- nomical records, various arts of civilized life, such as metal-working, architecture, agriculture, and pottery, so nearly resembling those of Eastern Asia, Egypt, and Etruria. Dr. Wilson and Dr. Tylor, as well as many other excellent anthropologists, assign an Asiatic origin to these things, but the route by which they were conveyed is undetermined. To Peru the way across the calm Pacific from China or Japan does not seem impossible ; but to Mexico, the most likely route would be across the Atlantic, and for this the fabled island of Atlantis seems a necessity. Atlantis has been made the subject of much controversy, and its existence is stoutly denied by most geologists, but it comes up again and again with renewed vigour, and it has always appeared to me probable that although the account of this great island and its destruction may have been greatly exaggerated, there must have been some foundation for the myth ; and indeed Mr. Wallace allows an extension of land or a chain of islands, since submerged, to have stretched some distance across the Atlantic, and these may reason- ably have formed stepping-stones for people who had attained to the art of navigation even in a rudimentary form. At all events, judging from the numerous legends, from sculptures and other works of art, especially in metal, there seems every reason to suppose that the great serpent myth originated in Asia, and was thence conveyed at a very early date by pre-Aryan metal- workers to Europe, Africa, and by one or more routes to America. The subject is so curious and interesting, and the legends connecting the serpent not only with metals, but with sacred stones and gems, are so numerous, that I purpose to devote a chapter to this branch of the subject, showing how the legends have spread from land SERPENT IN CONNECTION WITH METALLUEGY. 115 to land, and come down to modern times. Meanwhile it must be borne in mind that the serpent as a totem may have originated in many lands, and in fact is found all over the world in connection with the worship of deceased ancestors, being almost universally regarded as the receptacle of the soul, or spirit, of chiefs of abori- ginal tribes ; but it is in his aspect of benefactor, the giver of wealth, the teacher of agriculture and of the metallurgic arts, that I regard the serpent myth as of such great anthropological importance. CHAPTER IX.i SERPENTS AND PRECIOUS STONES. The Good Serpent or Dragon in Christian times Emblem of Kingly Power King Arthur Owen's History of Serpents Men Serpents Moses and the Serpent Good and Evil Ser- pents The former the Symbol of Gods and Benefactors The Midgard Worm Indian Legend The Serpent as Guar- dian of Gems Virtues of the Guardian transferred to the Gems Legends of Gems Abraham and the Ruby The Gesta Romanorum The Serpent-stone, or Bezoar Musk as an Antidote to Snake-bites Sculptured Snakes rendered Tombs Sacred Legends of Serpents in connection with Rude Stone Monuments The Serpent and Sun-worship Serpent Mounds The Serpent Egg of the Druids, and the Mundane Egg The Serpent Myth of Turanian Origin Disseminated by Colonists of that Race. ALL those who have visited the reptile house at the Zoological Gardens must have experienced, in a greater or less degree, that sensation of mingled loathing and fascination which the sight of the writhing, hissing, double-tongued monsters contained therein commonly excites in all beholders. " Cursed art thou above cattle, and above every beast of the field," seems to spring spontaneously to the lips, yet probably at least half of those who are so ready to use the words of the curse, bear about their persons, either in pin or ring, necklace or bracelet, or ear-ring, the semblance of the reptile they look upon with so much abhorrence. The lady places upon her finger, and the gentleman upon his breast, a jewel of price set in the head of a golden serpent, the valued gift probably of a lover or friend, who would 1 Reproduced in part from St. Paul's Magazine. SERPENTS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 117 symbolize thereby the eternity of his or her attachment. " The serpent with a ruby in its mouth " has always been a favourite love-token, doubtless at first employed as a charm, with a deeply mystical meaning ; but the modern jeweller, as he fashions the scaly monster to adorn the finger of the dainty lady or the breast of the warrior, little dreams that he is perpetuating one of the oldest superstitions of the heathen world. Had he lived in those remote ages, the lady and her lover must have been content without the coveted jewel, for the vene- rated form of this deadly reptile was sacred to the gods, and adorned only the images of divinities and their attendant priests, or the sovereign, who was himself looked upon as divine. He might indeed have been called upon to make a collar of gems ; but it would have been to adorn the neck of the living reptile the gift, not of a lover, but of a devout worshipper of the divinity enshrined within the writhing folds of the pampered serpent, for one of the curious anomalies in the history of this deadly reptile is, that it has ever been looked upon as god-like in all countries, the symbol of power and dominion, the revealer of hidden know- ledge, the guardian of hidden treasure, and the emblem of good and beneficent gods, until gradually it became changed both in form and character, and, as the dragon, is now looked upon in Christian countries as the emblem of sin and of the devil ; yet even in early Christian times it retained its character as the symbol of kingly power, for we find that pattern Christian knight, King Arthur, dreaming of himself as a great dragon, and assuming as his standard, after his father Uther Pendragon, the dragon of the great Pendragonship. " And to his crown the golden dragon clung, And down his robe the dragon writhed in gold, And from the carven-work behind him, crept Two dragons gilded, sloping down to make Arms for his chair, while all the rest of them, Thro' knots and ropes and folds innumerable, Fled ever thro' the wood-work, till they found The new design wherein they lost themselves." And thus, in armour covered with twining dragons, 118 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. stands Arthur as one of the Christian worthies sur- rounding the tomb of the Emperor Maximilian at Inns- bruck. In almost all ancient nations the dragon seems to have been borne as a standard, as it is at present in China, and the bearers were called Dracones. The Romans borrowed the custom from the Parthians or Assyrians, and their dracones were figures of dragons painted red on the flags ; but among the Persians and Parthians they were like the Roman eagles, figures in full relievo, so that the Romans often mistook them for real dragons. 1 " Among serpents," says Owen, the historian of the serpent, " authors place dragons, creatures terrible and fierce in aspect and nature. They are divided into Apodes and Pedates ; some with feet and some without ; some are privileged with wings, and others are destitute of wings and feet." According to Herodotus some serpents are born with necklaces of emeralds, and in many old books of Natural History we find snakes figured with crowns on their heads, being told that they are to be met with thus adorned by nature, in the deserts of Africa. It was doubtless one of these crowned serpents which disputed the march of his brother Alexander the Great into his dominions, and kept his whole army at bay for a con- siderable time. 2 I say his brother, for it is reported that both that great conqueror and Scipio Africanus claimed to be descended from serpents, sharing that enviable parentage with large tribes of high antiquity in India, Africa, and America, now almost extinct. Of all the strange pages of the world's history, that which relates to this deadly reptile is the most romantic and contradictory. If we turn to the Bible, we find the following strange anomalies : the sinful tempter, set forth as the type of Him who was tempted, yet without sin ; the most venomous of beasts presented as the image of the healer; the seducer of our first parents, proposed as an example of wisdom to Christians. 1 Eiwydopcedia Britannica, 8th Edition. 8 See Owen's History of Serpents. SERPENTS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 119 That these apparent contradictions should have given rise to innumerable controversies is not surprising, but into these I do not wish to enter. We are all, I presume, now ready to agree with Josephus when he says, that " Moses in speaking of events which occurred after the seventh day, did so philosophically ; " wherefore, we may assume his serpent to be a philosophical serpent, rather than that monster represented by later Rabbinical writers, who, according to Owen, affirm, that " Satan when he wished to tempt Eve, came riding upon a serpent of the bigness of a camel," and, doubtless, all glittering with gold and gems, or as described by Milton " Not with indented wave, Prone on the ground, as since, but on his rear Circular base of rising folds, that tower'd Fold above fold a surging maze, his head Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes ; With burnish 'd neck of verdant gold erect Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass Floated redundant ; pleasing was his shape, And lovely " The Universal History tells us that " The serpent whose body the devil possessed was not of the common kind, but something like that fiery sort which we are told are bred in Arabia and Egypt. They are of a shining yellowish colour like brass, and by the motion of their wings and vibration of their tails, rever- berating the sunbeams, make a glorious appearance ; these serpents are called in Scripture seraphs or sera- phim, and gave name to those bright angelical beings which we commonly understand by that appellation, and it is probable that the angels when they ministered to Adam and Eve were wont to put on certain splendid forms, some of them the form of cherubim or beautiful flying oxen, and others the shape of seraphim, winged and shining serpents." Certain it is that Moses in making the serpent the revealer of hidden knowledge, adopted a symbol easy to be understood by the Israelites after their long sojourn in Egypt, where the serpent was adored long before the 120 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. birth of Moses, as the emblem of Kneph, Cnubis, or Noum, the ram-headed divinity, supposed to be the prototype of Osiris, and of the Jupiter Ammon of the Greeks, the source of all knowledge and civilization; where also they might have become acquainted with that other serpent, the giant Apophis, slain by Horus, the emblem of evil and the evident origin of the Python of Apollo, of the serpent strangled by Hercules in his cradle, and of that slain by Krisna in India. 1 Owen says " The Egyptians divided serpents into good and evil, the emblems of good and the messengers of wrath," and this double character may be traced in almost all countries, but more especially wherever the influence of Egypt extended; yet, strange as it may seem, I think that we shall find that its evil character is of a later date, and that the original conception of this much-dreaded reptile was that of a shrine or emblem of all good and beneficent gods. Dr. Tylor, in treating of this subject, says " It is scarcely proved that savage races, in all their mystic contemplations of the serpent, ever developed out of their own minds the idea, to us so familiar, of adopting it as a personification of evil." And again he says " Serpents hold a -prominent place in the religions of the world, as the incarnations, shrines, or symbols, of high deities. Such were the rattlesnakes, worshipped in the Natchez temple of the sun, and the snake belong- ing in name and figure to the Aztec deity Quetzalcoatl ; the snake as worshipped still by the Slave Coast negro, not for itself, but for its indwelling deity; the snake kept and fed with milk in the temple of the old Slavonic god Potrimpos ; the serpent symbol of the healing god Asklepios, who abode in, or manifested himself through, the huge tame snakes kept in his temples; and the Phoenician serpent, with its tail in its mouth, symbol of the world and of the Heaven god Taaut, in its original meaning probably a mythic world snake, like the Scan- 1 In these serpent-slayers I would see the conquerors of abori- ginal tribes and founders of new dynasties. SERPENTS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 121 dinavian Midgard worm, but in the changed fancy of later times adapted into an emblem of eternity." l Now in all these instances, the serpent is the symbol of gods, chiefly worshipped as benefactors of mankind, and to them may be added the Chaldsean god Ha or Hoa, the source of all knowledge, who is figured on the black stones of Babylon as a great serpent. Turning to India, we find Vishnu the Preserver, sleeping during the long periods between his Avatars upon a couch of serpents, whose heads form a protecting canopy over him, and one of his Avatars or incarnations for the preservation of the world was in the form of a serpent. There, too, we see the egg of Brahma encircled by Agathodsemon, the good deity in the form of a serpent. Maurice in his History of Hindostan says " In Indian mythology the king of assoors or demons is called Naga, or king of serpents ; in its primary sense the word signifies diviner, and therefore a certain class of serpents, for they were always divided into two distinct classes, have been immemorially considered throughout all Asia as sacred animals, and as having something prophetical in their nature. Their bodies have been ever selected as the usual and favoured abode of the deity, and all the statues of Indian deities in the Elephanta cave are enveloped with serpents to mark their divinity." 2 In Persia both Ormuzd and Ahriman, the good and the evil principle, were alike represented as serpents. In Greek and Roman mythology the place occupied by the serpent is well known ; it was the emblem of Esculapius, the god of healing, 3 who was the son of Apollo, yet Apollo was the slayer of the great Python, so that here also we find the dualistic character of the reptile carried out; Athena or Minerva bears the serpent in both characters it adorns her person as an 1 Ty lot's Primitive Culture. 2 Maurice's History of Hindostan. 3 It may be observed that physicians until quite recently placed the serpent symbol of Esculapius at the beginning of their prescriptions. 122 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. emblem of divinity, and is employed on her shield as a part of the Gorgon's head, to be a terror to her enemies ; but probably in Etruria, Greece, and Rome, the serpent was looked upon rather as a minister of fate than as a divinity, although we read of the great serpent which defended the citadel of Athens, and was feasted with honey cakes monthly, and of the great serpent which was sent for from Epidaurus to Rome in consequence of the plague, and which left the vessel and took up its abode in the island of the Tiber, where a temple was" erected to Esculapius in honour of the indwelling god. The character of the Scandinavian serpent seems from some unexplained cause 1 to be almost wholly evil ; in Nifelheim (hell) he gnaws the roots of the tree of life, and encircles the whole earth, which he will eventually crush in his folds. This evil character of the Scandinavian serpent, when compared with that of India and Egypt, is the more remarkable when we remember that Norway is a land almost, if not quite, free from venomous snakes, whilst the serpents venerated in other countries, instead of being of the innocuous kind, are generally the most deadly of their species; thus it is the cobra which is the emblem of divinity in India, the deadly asp or cobra in Egypt, the rattle- snake in America ; and this appears still more strange when we contemplate these deadly reptiles as emblems of the god of healing. The connection of the serpent with precious stones appears to be divisible into two parts I. His relation to gold and gems. II. His relation to sculptured and sacred stones or mounds. I. We all remember tales and legends which charmed us in our childhood of great venomous dragons guard- ing vast treasures of gold and jewels, and holding in 1 The cause may probably be found in that race enmity, of which I shall treat more fully later, as existing between Turanian serpent worshippers and Aryans employing the eagle as their totem. SERPENTS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 123 durance vile some virtuous princess till slain by some valiant knight, who releases and marries the princess, and possesses himself of the treasure. The mediaeval representative of this class of legend is the famous Niebelungen Lied of Germany, in which Siegfried, the hero, after slaying a great guardian dragon and bathing in its blood, which makes him invulnerable, and possessing also a garment which renders him invisible, seizes a vast treasure which had belonged to a race of dwarfs (the Niebelungen), whom he had slain, and by virtue of his wealth and strength and invisibility thus acquired, marries Kriemhilda, sister of Gunther, King of Burgundy, which marriage leads to all the evil and bloodshed recorded in that fearful tale of treachery, revenge, and death. The origin of all the medieval tales of dragon-guarded treasures, is doubtless to be traced to the fable of the dragon-guarded golden apples of the Hesperides, of which Hercules possessed himself by the slaughter of the dragon ; but the serpent as the guardian of hidden treasure was revered in far earlier times, and in far distant countries, and it was only when Christianity became established, and taught that the serpent was the emblem of evil, that the good qualities which formerly had been assigned to the serpent as well as to the gem, were transferred from the guardian to the thing guarded, and precious stones were looked upon in Christian countries as sentient beings full of knowledge and power, able and willing to guard their wearer from all evil, whilst the dragon became a venomous beast, full of all malignity and wickedness. Both these ideas seem traceable in early Hebrew traditions, but that of the virtues of gems may also be found in India, as in the story of the Syamantaka gem, given by Mrs. Speir " A king named Satrajet enjoyed the privilege of a personal acquaintance with the sun, who appeared to him as a dwarf, with a body like burnished copper, and reddish eyes. He gave him the gem which he wore round his neck, which yielded eight pounds of gold a day, and averted fearful portents, wild beasts, fire, 124 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. robbers, and famine, but was death to a wearer who was not virtuous." 1 How early in the history of mankind gems began to be worn and appreciated, it is impossible to say. They are found in the most ancient of tombs and barrows. Their use probably preceded, or was coeval with, that of the precious metals. The love of ornament is in- herent in mankind, and we find the most barbarous nations as anxious for personal adornment as their more civilized brethren, therefore doubtless the glittering stones found in caves and rivers were ever eagerly sought for, and the persevering industry with which they were bored and polished is truly surprising. Dr. Tylor tells us that this was managed by means of sand and water and a leaf stalk twirled by the hand, and that a whole lifetime might have been consumed in thus slowly boring a single gem, in confirmation of which gems half bored have been found in many barrows buried with those who wrought them as their most precious earthly possession, and adds " Humboldt was so struck with the cylinders of very hard stone perforated and sculptured into the forms of animals and fruits in South America, that he argued therefrom that they were relics of an ancient civilization from which their possessors had fallen, quoting especially the pierced and sculptured emeralds found in the Cordilleras of New Granada and Quito. At present the inhabitants of these districts have so little idea of the possibility of cutting hard stones, emerald, jade,, felspar, and rock crystal, that they have imagined the green stone to be naturally soft when taken out of the ground, and to harden after it has been fashioned by man." 2 The ancients attributed many virtues to gems ; they were considered meet offerings to the gods; they all represented certain spiritual and moral virtues, and gave certain powers to their wearers, and were endowed with various mystic and even intelligent qualities. They all gave notice of the presence of poison, some 1 Life in Ancient India (Speir). 2 Tylor's Early History of Mankind. SERPENTS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 125 turning dark and turbid, others pale and sickly, and some shattering themselves to pieces in passionate despair and abhorrence at its touch. The diamond symbolized / innocence, justice, faith, strength, and the impassivity of fate./ An old black-letter book says that " God hath indued hym with greater vertues than many other stones, albeit all are indued with many." Next to the diamond comes the holy sapphire, which renders the bearer pacific, amiable, and pious, and confirms the soul in good works, and by the mere force of its own pure rays kills all noxious and venomous creatures. To look at one preserved the eyesight, and the powder of sapphire was a sovereign remedy against the plague. It is a Jewish myth that the first tables of the law given to Moses were of this stone, whilst the table of wisdom engraved by Hermes, and laid up in the Egyptian temple, was of emerald. It is worthy of remark that among the most ancient nations, and the semi-civilized barbarians of our own day, green stones seem to have been more highly prized than those of any other colour, and we read of wars among Polynesian tribes for the possession of certain green stones, used for making spear- and arrow-heads. The superstitious reverence felt by the Peruvians for emeralds is well known, and the tales told by Pliny and other old naturalists of the dragons, griffins, and wicked spirits who guard the emerald mines are numerous. Mr. Stevenson could not visit the emerald mine of Peru, owing to the superstitious dread of the natives, who assured him that it was enchanted, and guarded by a dragon, who poured forth thunder and lightning on those who dared to ascend the river that led to the mine. Marco Polo tells us that " the Khan of Tartary, having heard that the tomb of Adam was in Seilan (Ceylon), sent an embassy there, who procured two of the grinding teeth, which were very large, also the hair, and the cup of beautiful green porphyry which possessed such virtue, that when food was introduced for one man, it would be found enough for five." The qualities ascribed to the emerald in mediaeval times were those 126 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. of restoring sight and memory, of sending evil spirits howling into space, of giving its wearer the power of finding out secrets, and rendering him invisible, and of changing colour from green to yellow, if the lover was faithless ; arid if unable to do its possessor good, or to avert evil, it shivered itself into a thousand pieces broken by despair. But of all the gems the ruby (called by the Greeks anthrax or live coal) gathers to itself, under the name of carbuncle, the most wonderful legends. It was a carbuncle which was hung in the ark to give light by night, and what but the ruby gave that magnificent stream of living glory from the bowl of jewels which Abraham set in the midst of his iron city to give light to his imprisoned wives ? For Abraham was a jealous polygamist according to the Talmud, and must needs shut up his numerous wives in an iron city, where the very sunshine might not reach them, yet to give them light he set a bowl of jewels in their midst, which filled the air with lustre. 1 In all Eastern romances the ruby is to be found, lighting up enchanted halls, and filling dragon-guarded caves with floods of radiance ; (and the ruby is really in a degree phosphoric, occasionally giving out radiance under certain circumstances^ like other gems it gave notice of poison ; it also grw dark and cloudy if any evil was about to befall its wearer; but it banished sad- ness and many forms of sin and vice. The topaz was supposed to share with the ruby the property of giving light; worn round the neck it was a charm against sorcery, and had the power of banishing melancholy and sharpening the wit. The amethyst has the most pro- found antipathy to drunkenness, and so was used to stud drinking-cups, that men might drink to excess without intoxication. The opal was supposed to confer invisibility upon its wearer, but is also looked upon as the stone of misfortune. The turquoise, according to Bcethius, is believed to strengthen the sight and spirits of the wearer; 1 Temple Bar, Oct. 1861. SERPENTS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 127 but its chief commendation is its protective influence against falls, which everybody is assured it takes upon itself, so that the wearer escapes all hurt. It also shows by its hue the constancy of its owner. Turquoises are found almost exclusively in Persia, yet it is remarked that at the time of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, images were found among the Aztecs, inlaid with turquoises, in a manner precisely similar to that practised by the Persians; but the mine from which these stones came has never been discovered. The origin of amber gave rise to many fables, and its electric properties early attracted attention ; l worn round the throat, it was said to ward off erysipelas and sore throat, and jet was credited with the same virtues, and mixed with wine was a sovereign cure for toothache, and was also employed in divination. From all this it will be seen that the healing powers and gift of knowledge attributed in more ancient times to the serpent, were transferred later to the stones, of which he remained the guardian, although, probably in consequence of the study of the Hebrew Scriptures, he had become the emblem of sin and of Satan. Never- theless, we may remark that the transformation was not yet complete, as had the dragon been deemed wholly evil, he could not have been employed as guardian of those gems which were credited with the power of banishing and destroying everything evil. The Gesta Romanorum gives us some curious stories of the serpent making use of the gems under his care as curative agents and tokens of gratitude " Theodosius, the blind emperor, ordained that the cause of every injured person should be heard on ring- ing a bell placed in a public part of his palace. A serpent had a nest near the spot where the bell-rope fell. In the absence of the serpent a toad took posses- sion of her nest. The serpent twisting herself round the rope, rang the bell for justice; and by the emperor's 1 The Egyptians gave the name of amber stones to all stones connected with sun-worship, and the same idea appears in Electron, the Greek name tor amber. 128 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. special command the toad was killed. A few days after- wards, as the emperor was reposing on his couch, the serpent entered the chamber, bearing a precious stone in her mouth. The serpent creeping up to the emperor's face, laid the precious stone on his eyes, and glided out of the apartment, and immediately the emperor was restored to sight." The bell of justice denotes the Eastern character of this tale, for it occurs in the real history of a Chinese monarch, as related by Hue " A king had an oppressive seneschal, who, passing through a forest, fell into a deep pit, in which were a lion, an ape, and a serpent. A poor man, who gathered sticks in the forest, hearing his cries, drew him up, together with the lion, the ape, and the serpent. The seneschal returns home, promising to reward the poor man with great riches. Soon afterwards the poor man went to the palace to claim the promised reward, but was ordered to be cruelly beaten by the seneschal. In the meantime the lion drove ten asses laden with gold to the poor man's cottage ; the serpent brought him a precious stone of three colours ; and the ape, when he came to the forest on his daily business, laid him heaps of wood. The poor man, in consequence of the virtues of the serpent's precious stone, which he sold, arrived at the dignity of knighthood, and acquired ample posses- sions. But afterwards he found the precious stone in his chest, which he presented to the king. The king, having heard the whole story, ordered the seneschal to be put to death for his ingratitude, and preferred the poor man to his office." This precious stone of three colours seems an evident allusion to the serpent-stone of the Druids, which was of three colours, or to the stoue called Solinus, sacred to Mithra, the sun-god of Persia. " A knight who had dissipated all his substance in frequenting tournaments, in the reign of Fulgentius, is reduced to extreme poverty. A serpent haunted a chamber of his house, and being fed with milk by the knight, in return made his benefactor rich. The knight SERPENTS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 129 had the ingratitude and imprudence to kill the serpent, who was supposed to guard a treasure in his chamber, and by this act was again reduced to poverty." 1 A writer in Fraser's Magazine 2 gives a Lithuanian story of a child who stole away the crown of the king serpent, whilst he took his bath on a certain holy night, but was pursued by an army of snakes, and in her fright let fall the crown, with which the snakes returned, but one gem adhered to the child's apron, which enabled her to build a palace of solid gold. Also of the Knight Bran in the Isle of Wight, who picked up a dark stone, which was really the serpent's egg. He too was hotly pursued, but held on to the stone, which brought him untold treasures. One of the most curious of the properties ascribed by the ancients to gems, was that they were sexual, pro- ducing offspring, the males being described by Pliny as more acrid and vigorous, the females more languishing ; and it is singular to find in the present day miners carrying out the same idea with regard to the gold- bearing reefs of America, for in a mining circular we are told that the miners say they never find gold under the large hillocks, which they call male, or buck reefs, but only under the smaller, female, or doe reefs. The serpent as well as the toad, which in old books is classed as a serpent, was supposed to have " a precious jewel in its head; " and here I must call the attention of my readers to those curious stones known as serpent- stones, which are credited with the power of healing the bite of venomous serpents. The Encyclopaedia, Britannica (8th edition), under the head " Bezoar," gives the follow- ing description of this stone for preventing the fatal effects of poison " The first mention made of it is in Avenzoar, an Arabian physician. He describes it as generated of the tears of stags ; who, after eating serpents, used to run into the water up to the nose, where they stood till their 1 " Gesta Eomanorum " in Warton's History of Poetry, cap. CV.. CIX., CXII. 2 Fraser's Magazine, November 1872, " Demonology." K 130 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. eyes began to ooze a humour, which, collecting under the eyelids, gradually thickened and coagulated, till, being grown hard, it was thrown off by the animal in rubbing frequently. The bezoar is a calculous concre- tion found in the stomach of certain animals of the goat kind. It is composed of concentrical coats, surrounding one another, with a little cavity in the middle, contain- ing a bit of wood, straw, hair, or the like substances. There are two sorts, one brought from Persia and the East Indies, the other from the Spanish West Indies. The Oriental is of a shining dark green, or olive colour. The Occidental has a rough surface, and is less green in colour, but larger, being sometimes as large as a goose egg, whilst the Oriental seldom exceeds the size of a walnut, but is considered the most valuable." The deer described above as feeding upon serpents is evidently the musk deer, which I find from Du Halde's China is credited with the same fondness for a sorpentine diet, and the musk is considered so perfect an antidote to the bite of serpents, that peasants going into the dis- tricts where these reptiles abound, always carry about them a small portion, or place it between their toes, thus feeling quite secure from molestation. There can, I think, be no doubt that serpents, like other animals, have certain feelings of attraction and repulsion for strong scents, which are probably known to and made use of by snake-charmers. In all countries the ash tree has been deemed so inimical to snakes that they are supposed to be unable to pass through a circle made on the ground with this wood, and this superstition prevails in Scandinavia, England, and America, but I have not traced it to Africa and the East. It is evidently a bezoar which is described by Lord Lytton in his Strange Story, as used in Corfu as an antidote to the bite of serpents. " This stone is of an oval shape, of so dark a colour as not to be distinguished from black, and having been broken formerly, is now set in gold. When a person is bitten, the bite must be opened by a lancet and the stone applied within twenty-four hours. The stone attaches SERPENTS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 131 itself firmly to the wound, and when it falls off the cure is complete. It must then be thrown into rnilk, where- upon it vomits the poison it has absorbed, which remains green on the top of the milk, and the stone is then again fit for use. The peasants, when bitten, im- mediately apply for its aid, and it never failed but once, and that was when applied after twenty-four hours." Sir E. Tennant, in his Ceylon, gives an account of similar snake stones, except that they are intensely black and highly polished, which are used to cure the wounds of the cobra. A similar property is ascribed in Ireland and North Britain to the ancient stone spindle whorls called Pixies' wheels or Fairies' mill-stones, and also snake and adder stones. II. The relation of the serpent to sculptured, engraved and sacred stones carries us back farther into the world's history, and reveals to us the reptile as still the object of veneration, if not of adoration, among widely remote nations. If we search among the tombs of Egypt, Assyria, and Etruria, we shall find innumerable signets, cylinders, and scarabei of gems, engraved with serpents : these were probably worn as amulets, or used as insignia of authority ; and in the temples and tombs of these and other countries, serpents are engraved, or sculptured, or painted, either as hieroglyphics, or as forming sym- bolical ornaments of deities or genii. In India, as before mentioned, they are sculptured twining round all the gods of the cave temples. In Norway and Scotland they are engraved on the stones which, according to Fergusson, mark the graves of kings and heroes, and the oldest of the Scandinavian runes are written within the folds of serpents engraved on stones. In those mysterious erections of unknown use and date called the Torre dei Giganti in Malta, the only representation of animal life is a sculptured serpent on a stone near the entrance of an inner chamber. 1 In Peru, the un- fortunate Inca appointed to meet Pizarro in one of the large stone buildings in Caxamalca, called the House of the Serpent, from a serpent sculptured on its walls, and 1 Fergusson's Rude Stoue Monuments. 132 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. which he probably vainly imagined would on that account prove a sacred and inviolable refuge. The sculptured snakes of Greece and Rome are numerous; they may be seen twining round the rod of Mercury ; forming the necklace of Minerva, and hissing round the Gorgon's head on her shield ; representing the hair of the Furies, and incorporated with the three- headed monster Cerberus ; wreathing in their deadly folds Laocoon and his sons ; or writhing and quivering beneath the arrows of Apollo, or the club of Hercules. In all these various forms some one of the attributes of the serpent was symbolized. He is the messenger of fate to Laoc65n ; the symbol of vengeful power in the Furies and Gorgons ; the emblem of evil in the Hydra and Python ; of knowledge and power in Minerva and Mercury ; the guardian of Hades in Cerberus. In the sculptured stones of the North it would seem to have simply the character of a sacred guardian. Owen says " It is remarkable that where the figure of two serpents was erected in a place, that place was looked upon as consecrated"; and again, "In Calicut the dragon was made guardian of houses and temples, and all their treasures." Thus, probably, the dragons sculptured on tombs were so placed as a sacred seal to prevent the sacrilegious spoliation of the dead, who were frequently buried in costly ornaments. Of this char- acter was no doubt the dragon on the tomb of King Gorrn in Jutland, to which Fergusson assigns the date of A.D. 950, wherein was found a silver goblet lined with gold, and ornamented with interlaced dragons, and also tortoise-shaped fibulae, with fantastic heads of animals; and the one in Scania, beneath which treasure was found by the Northmen in 1152, and many others of the same kind might be mentioned. Owen, descanting upon serpent worship, says quaintly " Some make Cain the founder of serpent worship, but the general opinion is that it did not commence till after the deluge, because the world was drowned for atheism, and Noah's successors thought it better to have many gods than none. Some Rabbins," he says, SERPENTS AND PEECIOUS STONES. 133 "call the serpent that deceived Eve the angel of the dead ; others look upon him as the prince of angels, and believe he is to preside at the last judgment, and make offerings to him on the day of solemn expiation, to appease his indignation. Taautus attributed some deity to the nature of a serpent, an opinion approved by the Phoenicians, who represented the world as a circle, in the midst of which was a serpent representing the Good Demon or Genius of the World, and a symbol of the Almighty Creator." l In treating of the sacred stones connected with serpents, we will leave out of the list those great circles, such as Stonehenge and Avebury, which were imagined by Stukeley and others to have been erected by serpent- worshippers in the form of their god, and respecting one of which circles, that of Stanton Drew, there is related a post-Christian legend in Rtide Stone Monuments, which would certainly tell in favour of the old belief. The legend relates that " Keyna, a holy virgin in the fifth century, daughter of a Welsh king, obtaining a grant of the land on which Keynsham now stands, was warned of the insecurity of the gift, in consequence of the deadly serpents which infested the place ; she however converted the serpents into the stones which form the circle at Stanton Drew." 2 A similar legend is related of St. Hilda, but the serpents she converted into stone, after depriving them of their heads, were ammonites. But leaving all these traditionary serpent-stones, and temples for serpent-worship, as still of doubtful origin and design, there remain others both in our own country and in America, and probably in many other countries, of undoubtedly serpentine form. One of these, discovered in Scotland by Dr. Phene", F.R.G.S., near Loch Nell, in Argyleshire, is described in Good Words for March 1872. Many cairns opened in the neighbour- hood were found to contain various stones both round and conical, evidently used as symbols of divinity, the 1 Owen's History of Serpents (1742). 2 Rude Stone Monuments, Fergusson. 134 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. round or oval probably representing the earth, or earth- goddess, and the conical the sun or fire. The use of the pine-cone in worship is abundantly shown in Assyrian sculptures, and according to Hooker, it is still used by aboriginal Indian tribes as an offering to their gods. On many old coins and medals the rays of the sun are represented by separate conical projections, resem- bling these stones in form, and therefore it appears probable that the conical sacred stones, in these serpent mounds, would denote that their builders were also sun- worshippers. The conical black stones found at Babylon, 1 upon which are depicted the constellations, the serpent being the most prominent, were evidently connected with the worship of the sun-god, as his emblem, and that of his wife, with that of the moon, surmount the whole. It is singular that in the East black stones seem the most sacred ; but of the black stone in the Kaaba at Mecca, tradition says it was originally white. The serpent-shaped mound at Loch Nell is small compared with a similar one in Ohio, which is 700 feet long ; but that which most plainly connects the two is the fact that a large oval mound is found near the mouth of each, evidently representing the mystical egg, which appears so frequently in the mythologies of all countries. There appears to me an extraordinary resemblance, which cannot be accidental, between the serpent- mounds with the oval mound near the head of each, and the rude scratchings hardly to be called engravings, found on some of the oldest stones in cairns and dolmens, one of which from Dowth, in Ireland, is figured in Rude Stone Monuments; and of all, to the great constellation Serpentarius, in which the serpent appears to be gaping to swallow, or rather to eject from his mouth, that oval cluster of stars called the Northern Crown, the whole group, as figured in the constellation, bearing an evident analogy to the Indian and Egyptian myths, relating to the mundane egg, or egg of Brahma, 1 See Kawlinson's Ancient Monarchies. SERPENTS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 135 which, as I have before noticed, is represented as en- circled by Agathodaemon in the form of a serpent ; the same idea being carried out in the winged and serpent- enfolded globes of the Egyptian temples, in Mexican sculptures, and in the serpent's egg adored by the Druids. This famous egg and its origin is thus de- scribed in the Encyclopedia Britannica J "This extraordinary egg was formed, as they pre- tended, by a great number of serpents, interwoven and twisted together, and when it was formed it was raised up in the air by the hissing of these serpents, and was to be catched in a clean white cloth before it fell to the ground. The person who catched it was obliged to mount a swift horse, and to ride away at full speed to escape from the serpents, who pursued him with great rage until they were stopped by some river. The way of making trial of the genuineness of the egg was no less extraordinary. It was to be enchased in gold, and thrown into a river, and if it was genuine it would swim against the stream. " ' I have seen ' (says Pliny) ' that egg ; it is about the bigness of a moderate apple ; its shell is a cartilaginous incrustation, full of little cavities, such as are on the legs of the polypus ; it is the insignia or badge of dis- tinction of the Druids.' The virtues which they ascribed to this egg were many and wonderful. It was particu- larly efficacious to render those who carried it about with them superior to their adversaries in all disputes, and to procure them the favour and friendship of great men." This anguinum ovum is supposed to have been the curious glass bead of three colours, still sometimes found in barrows, but they do not seem to agree with the description of Pliny, and although the whole account as given by that celebrated naturalist has been regarded as fabulous, it must be observed that Dr. Livingstone tells us, that he has found in Africa a number of serpent-skins knotted arid twined together in the 1 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 8th edition : Article, " Anguinum Ovum." 136 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. manner above described. It seems no uncommon thing for snakes to roll themselves together in a ball during cold weather. Many of these balls of living hissing snakes, some of great size, have been described by travellers, but the egg is of course mythical. This connection between the serpent and the egg represents some very ancient religious mystery of Eastern origin. The article upon the anguinum ovum in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, before quoted, goes on to say " Some have imagined that this story of the anguinum was an emblematical representation of the doctrine of the Druids concerning the creation of the world. The serpents, say they, represent the Divine wisdom forming the universe, and the egg is the emblem of the world formed by that wisdom." Maurice says " On the ancient sculptures and medals, the egg and the serpent, single or combined, occur in great variety : the mundane egg, encircled with Agathodsemon, the good serpent, suspended in the temple of Hercules at Tyre, is well known." x And he adds " The idea of the mundane egg is supposed to have been derived from Taut or Hermes, prime minister of Osiris, the imaginary invader of India. His maxim was that the world was oviform, and hence the oval figure of many of the oldest Egyptian temples." It is certain that those gods of whom the serpent was particularly emblematical, were generally regarded as the Creator, forming the world from an egg, and are usually represented with this egg proceeding from their mouth. For this egg I believe the pine-cone was substituted at a later date, as being conic oviform, containing within it the germs of life, and the united forms of the stones emblematic of the sun and earth, and thus the serpent mounds, each with its oval mound or egg close to the head, representing so minutely the ancient Eastern traditions, and the Druidical legends, as handed down to us, become most interesting 1 History of Hindostan. SERPENTS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 137 ethnological studies ; and that the same combination should occur in the sculptures of Mexico is very re- markable. It seems certain that the Druids employed some sort of stone, under the name of serpent's egg, both as a charm and an emblem of some divinity, probably of that obscure deity called Esus or Hesus, supposed to represent the Earth ; and in the medicinal properties ascribed to this curious stone, we may see the first traces of those wonderful properties ascribed to precious stones as already related ; and also one of the earliest historical notices of the reverence paid to stones in Britain, a reverence which seems to prevail among almost all semi-civilized races, and a survival of which may be traced in our veneration for the coronation-stone at Westminster, which, singularly enough, appears to have come originally from the neighbourhood of the great serpent mound at Loch Nell, and may, perhaps, have some connection with it. Numerous instances in which stones of a peculiar shape have been found in ancient barrows are given in Dr. John Evans' Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain, and these are almost always either o\iform or conical, and among them may be specially noted one found in a barrow near Stonehenge, described as a sardonyx, striated with belts of colour, and spotted all over with very small white spots. Two at Caer Leb, Anglesea, supposed to be amulets, had also a band of little pits round them, which would seem to connect them with Pliny's anguinum ovum. Two egg-shaped objects, apparently of Carrara marble, were found in Luneburg tunnel ; and in the churchyard at Penneynedd, Anglesea, numerous skeletons were found with a white oval pebble near each. The learned author says " It is doubtful whether these bones were those of Christians or not," but adds " In interments of earlier date, such instances seem to point to some superstitious custom, probably like that in India, where the mystic Salagramma pebble held in the hands of the dying Hindoo is a sure preservative against the pains 138 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. of eternal punishment." This pebble it must be remarked was black. But the most remarkable proof of the connection between the serpent and pebbles of a conical form as emblems of the sun, may be seen in vol. ii. of the Archceologia, where a deity is figured evidently repre- senting the sun, the upper half that of a woman, her head surrounded with the conical projections already noticed, and holding in her hand a conical pebble, the lower part of the body terminating in a serpent's tail. 1 This remarkable figure was found in a tumulus in Tartary, but similar figures may be seen among Indian and Etruscan sculptures and paintings. It is generally conceded that this great serpent myth was of Turanian, that is Mongoloid, and pre-Aryan origin, and it is worthy of notice that the only civilized countries preserving the old veneration for the serpent or dragon are China and Japan, both Mongoloid empires. There too the royal ceremonial boats are still made in the form of serpents, as formerly those of Scandinavia and probably of Egypt were also. In China a dragon is still appointed as guardian of every province, and if he refuses to listen to the prayers of the people to grant them rain or fine weather as desired, he is banished for a time. Perhaps the nearest modern approach to the serpent's egg of the Druids is to be found in Dahome, where Dank, the Heavenly Snake, is said to make the Popo beads, and to confer wealth on man ; and there, as also among the Zulus, the snake is identified with the rain- bow, which may also be figured in the Scandinavian Eirek's Saga, where " Eirek, journeying towards Para- dise, came to a stone bridge guarded by a dragon, and entering into its maw found he had arrived at the world of bliss." The inferences to be drawn from all these instances in which we find stones of various kinds associated with the serpent, or with a race of serpent-worshippers, appears to me to be that the whole egg-and-serpent 1 Among Turanian races the sun is usually a female divinity. SERPENTS AND PRECIOUS STONES. 139 myth originated in the far East, probably in India or Scythia ; that it was of Turanian origin, and became disseminated over the whole world by colonists of that race, and although it was repudiated by the succeeding Aryan races, who brought with them their own mythology, and probably rejected with scorn the traditions of the conquered, turning the beneficent Agathodsemon into the terrible dragon, the emblem of sin and of all evil, yet the older traditions lingered among the aborigines, who became probably largely mixed up with the conquerors, and hence we find among the folk-lore of almost all nations, traditions in which the serpent or dragon becomes a powerful agent for good as well as for evil, a healer, a treasure guardian and wealth-giver. It also seems probable that these early serpent races were in all cases the pioneers of civiliz- ation; all the traditions clustering round them point them out as agriculturists and metal workers; their monuments would seem to show that they were astro- nomers and architects of the cyclopean type ; but they appear also to have mixed up with their superstitions the bloody rites of human sacrifices, although probably in the beginning their creed was pure sun-worship, and the serpent was simply a totem, the tribal emblem of some great ancestor or benefactor, to whom they had been indebted for much of their knowledge and the power it gave them over the rude tribes to whom they carried the arts of civilization, and by whom they became venerated as great good serpents. The serpent was thus looked upon as the very emblem of the Creator, or great ancestor, and from this became developed that worship of ancestors which is so peculiar to Turanian races. CHAPTER X. DIVINATION BY THE ROD AND BY THE ARROW. 1 Witch-doctors and Diviners Modern Dowsers History of the Divining-rod Its Shape To be cut from a Fruit-bearing Tree Connection with the Sceptre and with Horns as Sym- bols of Power The Bifurcated Stick with Eings borne by many Gods Augury by Birds Survival in the Wishing- bone Miracles wrought by the Rod Extreme Development of Rhabdomancy among the Finns Miraculous Virtues as- cribed to Trees Divination by Arrows Used in casting Lots Belomancy practised by Nebuchadnezzar and by the Ancient Greeks Lots among the Anglo-Saxons, Hottentots and Kaffirs Connection of Rods and Arrows with Ancient Alphabets Magical Virtues of Runes The Etruscan Tages and Greek Python The Irish Alphabet Rhabdomancy and Belomancy traceable to pre- Aryan Race Possibly possessed of a Power unknown to us Subject for Psychological Research. IN investigating the early history of the human race, we cannot fail to be struck with the great part played by those who are now denominated witch-doctors among savages, but who in earlier times and under various names have followed the arts of Divination, for in some form divination has been practised by every nation, civilized and uncivilized, with which we are acquainted. It doubtless had its origin in the world's infancy, when men began to see in natural objects things incompre- hensible, and were led by dreams and visions to a belief in the supernatural, and by a further step in the same direction to associate the spirits of the departed with things animate and inanimate. Hence arose an elabor- ate system, divided into numerous branches, requiring 1 Reproduced with additions from the Journal of the Anthro- pological Institute, April 1876. DIVINATION BY THE ROD AND BY THE ARROW. 141 as its exponents trained men skilled in the deep mys- teries of nature, and admitted to a knowledge of those dexterous juggleries whereby natural phenomena were made to assume awful and threatening aspects in the eyes of the ignorant and superstitious multitude, in order the more securely to maintain that authority obtained by a reputation for supernatural power. Thus the magicians of Egypt, the astrologers of Chaldsea, the magi of Persia, the augurs of Etruria, Greece, and Rome, the Druids of Gaul and Britain, all diviners, exercised probably more real power than the kings and chiefs of their respective countries, who were commonly only the ministers of the will of the gods as interpreted by their priests. To treat of divination as a whole would be manifestly impossible ; the subject is so vast that it would require volumes. I therefore purpose to take two branches only of this wide subject, believing that in their exten- sive range and singular affinities they present matter of especial interest to anthropologists, whilst the survival of one of them in our own country at the present day is a curious instance of the durability of superstition not- withstanding the advance of education and civilization. Among the Mendip Hills, in the old mining districts of Cornwall and Derbyshire, Rhabdomancy, or divina- tion by the rod, still flourishes, and only last year a long correspondence took place in the Spectator and some other papers with regard to its use in various parts of England for the discovery of water, the operators being in almost all cases well-known dowsers from the West of England. One of these I have myself seen at work in the neighbourhood of Bath, and can testify that water was certainly found at the spot indicated by him, in conse- quence of the violent agitation of the hazel-rod he carried. These diviners always assert that the power of the rod is confined to very few, not one in a thousand being able to make use of it ; and I certainly never heard that those who ridicule the practice have themselves been able to control the motions of the rod, which in many cases becomes so violently agitated as to break in the 142 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. hands 01 the operator ; but whether this is effected by sleight of hand, or whether there really exists some mysterious force in certain persons not possessed by mankind in general, I must leave to the judgment of psychologists. Reports have from time to time been given of wonders performed by this mysterious power, and there can be no doubt of the belief of Cornish and Meodip miners in its genuineness. They have been called upon to exer- cise it not only in England, but in some of the Colonies, and have generally done so successfully; nevertheless there are doubtless many pretenders to the art, some of whom, as the notorious Jacques Aylmar (1692), have been proved to have been impostors ; but for particulars of these, and of the well-known case of Lady Milbanke, who convinced Doctor Button of the reality of the power by discovering a spring in his own garden, I must refer the curious to the pages of Notes and Queries, the \Quarterly Review, 1853, Migne's Dictionary ("Sciences Occultes"), and the works of Pierre Lebrun, Baring Gould, and others; my object being not so much to analyze the possibility of the alleged power, as to trace the origin of a widespread belief. All writers who have treated of divination by the rod have assigned to it a very high antiquity. They generally trace its origin to the Scythians, and say that from them it passed into Assyria, ^Palestine, Greece, Etruria, Rome, and by another route through Russia and Germany to England. They identify the divining- rod with the miracle-working rod of Moses and Aaron, the Caduceus of Mercury, the wand of Circe and other magicians, and the Htuus of Romulus and Numa Pom- pilius ; and in all the wonders related of it may be traced some connection with one or other of these famous miracle-working wands, for the divining-rod was employed not only to discover water-springs and metals, but also to mark out boundaries, to discover corpses, and to bring to justice murderers and thieves. In the discovery of water its affinity was with the rod of Moses, who by striking the rock with the rod caused water to DIVINATION BY THE ROD AND BY THE ARROW. 143 gush forth ; but the remaining qualities assigned to it seem to have more especial reference to the Caduceus of Mercury, which was the golden rod of wealth, and was used to conduct souls to Hades ; whilst Mercury in his character as Hermes was especially the god of boundaries and of thieves, having himself been a thief, even from the day of his birth, when he rose from his cradle to steal the cattle of Apollo. In the power assigned to the divining-rod of tracing boundaries we see its affinity not only with the rod of Mercury, and that of the older Egyptian Thoth or Hermes, who taught the Egyptians to measure their fields, but also with the lituus of Romulus, used by him to mark out the various regions of Rome, and which was afterwards laid up in the temple of Mars as a most precious relic. Plutarch says that Romulus was very religious and very clever in divination, and for this purpose made use of a lituus, which is a (bent) stick. This lituus was preserved as a sacred object, and no profane hands were allowed to touch it. This rod was found entire after the barbarians had pillaged and burnt the city, upon which Cicero remarks "What a consolation for the Romans to re- cover this rod ; it was to them an earnest of the eternal duration of Rome ! " l Livy tells us that it was by this lituus that Numa was elected to succeed Romulus, but he fails to tell us by what signs the choice was deter- mined, although the ceremony is thus described " Numa, wishing to consult the gods, as his predecessor had done, caused an augur to conduct him to a high citadel. There this augur, having in his right hand this bent stick, placed himself on the left of the prince. He observed the aspect of the town and of the country, prayed to the gods, and marking the east and the west, turned towards the east to have the south on his right hand, after which he took the lituus in his left hand, put his hand on the head of the prince, and made this prayer ' Father Jupiter, if Justice demands that Numa Pompilius, whose head I touch, should be king of the Romans, suffer us to have evident signs of it in the 1 Lebrun. 144 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. division I am about to make.' " l The likeness of the divining-rod to the wand of Circe is to be found in its use by magicians in their fancied metamorphoses of themselves and others into various animals. It may be supposed that with the numerous pro- perties assigned to the divining-rod different forms and different substances would be employed in its manufacture ; thus we find that although the most general form was that of the letter Y> with the lower limb more or less elongated, the reason assigned for the form being that it is supposed that the hands convey some virtue to the rod, yet sometimes a straight stick was employed, or one cut straight in the centre, with a branch at each end (i i), and sometimes the forked branch was cut close to the fork (V), whilst frequently several rods were used together. Hazel was the wood generally most esteemed, but the almond, the willow, the ash, or some fruit-bearing tree had each many advocates. Some argued that in searching for metals, rods of metal should be used, or that at least the wooden rod should be tipped with metal ; and it was commonly believed that it would only turn for that particular object in the search for which it was employed ; to ensure which result it should be first touched with that substance which it was expected to discover. In using them sometimes a prayer was said, or sometimes a cross was engraved on the rod. Lebrun 2 describes four old divining-rods found in Paris, on which were inscribed the names of the three magi, Baltazar, Gaspar, and Melchior. In the laws of the Frisians after their conversion to Christianity, permission was given to use divining-rods in proving homicide, and the ceremony was performed in church before the altar. Two twigs, one marked with the sign of the cross, were covered with clean wool and laid upon the altar, or the holy reliques, and a prayer made that God would by a sign discover the guilty. 3 1 Lebrun, torn. ii. p. 394. 2 Ibid. torn. ii. bk. vii. p. 635. 3 Archceologia, vol. xlii. DIVINATION BY THE ROD AND BY THE ARROW. 145 In considering the origin of the supernatural qualities assigned to the divining-rod, we cannot fail to observe its obvious connection with the use of a rod or staff, either plain or variously ornamented, in all ages and in all countries, as a symbol of authority. The sceptre of modern monarchs has its prototypes in ancient Egypt, in Peru, and even among the relics of the unknown pre-historic cave-dwellers of France and Britain ; for some archaeologists believe that the stag's antlers per- forated with one or more holes, and often engraved with various figures, which are sometimes found in the caves explored, are the sceptres or wands of office of those primitive people, although they are more probably identified with the arrow- straighteners still in use among the Eskimo. It seems to me not altogether improbable that the branching horns of the stag, used in former times as a token of the power possessed by the chief of a tribe, may have suggested the form of the divining-rod. Certain it is that horns of various kinds were used in the very earliest times to symbolize power, and hence were frequently chosen to adorn the heads of gods. The figure most suggestive of the use of the horn as a symbol of dignity in Gaul and Britain is that dug up in Paris, and engraved in the Pictorial History of England. It represents a robed man, the head adorned with horns, which may be either single-branched stag's horns or forked sticks, and beneath is the in- scription Cernunnos; the peculiarity in this figure is that the horns have upon them several rings strung upon a larger one. Now we are told by Philostrates that " The Indian Brahmins carry a staff and a ring by means of which they are able to do almost anything." * The images of Vishnu commonly represent him as twirling a ring on the finger of one hand, whilst on the cylinders of Babylon the forked and branched wands borne by priests or monarchs are frequently adorned with rings. In all magical ceremonies the first step was to draw a circle with the magic wand. The Assyrian goddess Hera, figured by Layard, bears in one 1 History of Magic, p. 220. 146 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. hand a rod surmounted by a circle, and in the other one with a crescent ; and it is a curious coincidence that in the rock sculptures of Peru, as given in Hutchinson's work, a human figure appears bearing a rod, to the end of which a ring is attached, whilst another rod of the form of a bifurcated stick is represented on the same rock, having a bird perched upon it, thus evidently connecting it with augury. 1 "The bifurcated stick," says Tyndale in his book on Sardinia, 2 " must have been an important symbol; it appears in Etruscan tombs, and on Babylonian cylinders. In the coins of Cyprus the columns of the temple of Venus are represented with bifurcated capitals, and the Pythagorean Y> the symbol and emblem of human life, might perhaps also be considered an analogous character." To these may certainly be added the standards of the ancient Egyptians as given by Wilkinson (vol. i. p. 294), upon which the same form of the branched or bifurcated stick appears ; indeed the rods borne by Egyptian gods or priests are almost always forked at the lower end, whilst they bear on the top either a lotus-flower or the head of some sacred animal, most commonly that of the sacred jackal ; and it is worthy of remark that the same animal was also sacred in Mexico, where it has been found buried with care. 3 If we turn to the representations of the divinities of Greece and Rome we find them all bearing rods typical of their several attributes, and amongst them the ring and staff and the bifurcated stick are conspicuous. That which I take to be an early form of the Caduceus given in Smith's Dictionary as from a painted vase, represents these two forms combined, whilst in that assigned to Pluto the origin from the head and horns 1 Mr. Hutehinson describes a stone found in a ruined city of Peru, on which is represented " a man holding in his hand a kind of staff or sceptre formed of a group of serpents, and on his head an ornament on which is engraved a large number of snakes and other figures." Anthropology of Peru. T. J. Hutehinson, Journal of Anthropological Institute, April 1875. 2 Tyndale's Sardinia. * Tylor, Anahuac. DIVINATION BY THE ROD AND BY THE ARROW. 147 of an animal may readily be traced. Two singular survivals illustrating the use of a forked stick in divin- ation and lots, and connecting it also with that which I believe to be the earlier form, that of the horn, and also with augury by birds may here be noted. The first is the use still made by young people of the merrythought or wishing-bone of a fowl, the form of which is that of the divining-rod, and also of the branching horns of the stag ; this pulled asunder denotes good luck to the one in whose hand the larger portion remains, and being again drawn as a lot gives a wish to the fortunate drawer of the lucky portion, the belief in the peculiar luckiness of this bone being evidently derived from the ancient use of the cock in divination. The second survival I would notice is the use of the first and fourth fingers of the hand extended so as to form a figure strongly resembling the rod of Pluto as a/charm against the evil eye. I do not know whether this form, which is called " making horns," is still employed in England, but it is commonly used in Italy. The form of the rods of Moses and Aaron are not defined, but from the budding of the latter it was" probably a branched stick of almond. There is a passage in Hosea (iv. 12): "My people ask counsel at their stocks, and their staff declareth unto them," which is given by Jerome, Cyril, and other com- mentators as well as the Septuagint as referring to Rhabdomancy among the Hebrews, who are said to have learnt the art in Babylon ; and it is suggested that perhaps at the same time they consulted both the rod and an idol, the figure of some god being engraved on the rod. The use of divers rods in divination would soon cause them to be regarded as possessed of inherent power; hence we find innumerable instances given of miracles wrought by the rod. It is evident that some veneration existed in the mind of Moses for the rod which became a serpent, and wherewith he smote the rock ; and that of Aaron which budded and produced almonds was laid up in the ark with superstitious reverence. When 148 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. Elisha was applied to for the restoration of the dead son of the Shimammite, he sent Gehazi to lay his staff upon the child's face as though in that resided life- giving power, and this belief in the miraculous and curative properties of the rod, extended to mediaeval times. In Lebrun's Histoire des Pratiques Superstitieuscs, p. 367, we find, " Borel relates of the physician Laigneau, that he made use of no other remedy than a rod of hazel to cure broken bones. He cut little hazel-wands when the sun entered the sign of the Ram, and having sealed the two ends to keep in the virtue, he only rubbed the contusions with one of these rods, and the bones were restored to their places as if by enchantment. The same doctor also prepared rods of ash at the conjunc- tion of the sun and moon in the sign Aries, and by a touch with them cured haemorrhages." Lenormant points out the extreme development of this superstition among the Finns thus " Whatever might be the power of those enchantments which con- trolled nature and supernatural beings, spirits, and gods, there is a talisman still more powerful, for it arrests their effect and protects from it those who possess it; it is the ' celestial rod ' (baton celeste) analogous to the divining-rod of the Magi of Media. The gods them- selves can only be secured against certain enchantments by virtue of this rod." l Wainamb'inea, menaced by the chief sorcerer of Lapland, replies to him " The Lapp cannot injure me by his enchantments, for I have in my hand the celestial wand, and he who hates me, he who creates mischief, does not possess it." When the magician traced with his wand a circle on the ground, as was commonly done in all magical cere- monies, it was doubtless to signify the power he possessed by virtue of the rod over the god supplicated. Hence the circle which everywhere represented the sun became united with the rod to form a magical symbol ; and the same was the case with the crescent signifying the moon, represented in its earlier form by the bifur- 1 Les Scieiices Occultes en Asie, Lenormant, p. 241. DIVINATION BY THE ROD AND BY THE ARROW. 149 cated stick. Thus when we find these figures carried out in stone circles, grave-mounds, and tumuli, as notably at Stonehenge, and among the Sepolture dei Giganti in Sardinia, we may reasonably assume them to have been erected by the worshippers of those gods whose symbols they represent. In almost all civilized lands we have legends of trees to which miraculous virtues are ascribed. The oaks of Dodona and of the Druids, the ash of Scandinavia, America, and Britain, the fig-tree of India are examples of this ; but there is something unexplained in the peculiar power ascribed to the hazel, from which prefer- ably magicians' wands were made. This is supposed by some to arise from its faint resemblance to the almond, from which the rod of Aaron was taken; or, according to others, because it was the wood used by Moses to sweeten the waters of Marah. But that a peculiar sanctity was attached to the hazel and its fruit in lands where Moses and Aaron were quite unknown, and long prior to the introduction of any Jewish or Christian tradition, is evident from the frequent discovery of hazel-nuts in pre-historic graves, not only in this country, but even in Peru. 1 Lebrun gives the following prayer or incantation used at the cutting of divining-rods, which certainly savours strongly of worship "Hazel, I break thee, I conjure thee by the virtue of the Most High God, to show me where may be found gold, silver, or precious stones ; I conjure thee to show me that thou hast as much virtue as the rod of Moses, which he made into a serpent. I conjure thee to show me that thou hast as much power as that of Aaron, when he led the chil- dren of Israel across the Red Sea. Thus I break thee, hazel, at this time, in order that thou mayst discover to me that which is hidden, in the name of God," <&c. Although the almond furnished the rod of Aaron, that of Moses, called the rod of the prophets, was cut, we are told, by Adam from a myrtle of Paradise, and was given to Moses by Shoaib, the father of Zipporah, 1 See Hutchinson's Two Years in Peru. 150 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. to whom it had descended, in order to drive away the wild beasts from his flocks, 1 and the singular tradition connecting this rod with the Christian Cross is worthy of notice, although the tradition, as given in the Cursor Mundi, differs somewhat from that of the Koran quoted above. According to the Cursor Mundi, three trees cedar, cypress, and pine grew from seeds placed under Adam's tongue after death, and rods of these three trees grew miraculously three nights following, at the head of Moses in the wilderness ; he therefore plucked up the rods and carried them with him, and by virtue of them converted the bitter waters into sweet, and finding them to be so potent, would never let the wands go out of his sight. Before his death Moses planted them again in a secret place, which was revealed to David in a dream ; and the three wands having grown into one stem, yet still separate, the tree thus formed was carried by the king to Jerusalem, many miracles of healing having been performed by the "virtuous trees " upon the road. In Jerusalem they were planted, duly guarded, and greatly reverenced by Solomon, who sat beneath their shadow, which had a miraculous influence. The cedar-tree was felled to make a beam for the temple, but not having been used for that, was laid up in the temple, and from the silver girths with which David had bound it, were made the silver coins given to Judas Iscariot. The beam was then thrown into a pool, to which it communicated healing virtues, and after having served as a bridge in order that its virtues might be trodden out by the feet of sinful men, was chosen to form the wood of the cross in fulfilment of the prophecy of Solomon. 2 Belomancy, or divination by arrows, existed side by side with Rhabdomancy in many countries, and has often been confounded with it. In fact, they seem to be very closely connected, the history of their origin being almost identical; for whilst the divining-rod is I Sale's Koran, cap. xxviii. p. 319, note. II See Athenceum, Aug. 31st, 1875 : Article, " Cursor Mundi." DIVINATION BY THE ROD AND BY THE ARROW. 151 traced to the golden rod given to Mercury by Apollo, the divining arrow, which was also of gold, was given by Apollo to a mythical personage named Abaris, who is said to have come from the land of the Hyperboreans to Greece in the time of Pythagoras, in consequence of a terrible pestilence, which could only be remedied by offerings to Apollo made in Athens for all nations. Abaris, the Hyperborean, was the ambassador from his own country, and he then received from the god this magic arrow. By means of this arrow Abaris could transport himself instantaneously over land and sea as on a horse. Mercury is also said to have used the Caduceus in this manner, so that it may well be that Abaris is but a later form of Mercury, and that in the rod of the one and the arrow of the other, we see the origin of the witch's broom-stick. It is, at all events, matter of history that arrows marked with certain signs were used in divination among the Scythians, Chaldaeans, Arabs; and Tacitus (Germ. 10) says, among the Germans also. We find this superstition imbedded in a tale which is said to be widely current in the east of Europe, and exists also in the collection of stories of the Turkish races in South Siberia, edited by Radloff. 1 According to this tale " When the hero, who has descended into the lower world, and has been left there by his faithless com- panions, saves a brood of eaglets from a dragon, 2 he is eaten up by the hasty mother eagle on her return. But as her eaglets weep at the sight she spits him out again. In the end he calls upon his treacherous comrades to join with him in shooting arrows straight up into the air by way of ordeal. His arrow strikes the ground before him, but theirs fall back upon their heads, and they die." Lebrun says, quoting from Thevenot's Voyage in the Levant, that " Among the Turks, people may be seen 1 Gipsy Folk Tales, Von Dr. Franz Nuklosich. 2 The reader will not fail to observe in this tale the constantly recurring enmity between the eagle and the serpent or dragon, referred to in a former chapter. 152 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. seated on the ground with a number of books spread on the ground round them. They take four arrows cut to a point, and place them in the hands of two persons ; then they place upon a cushion a naked sword, and read a certain chapter of the Koran, during which these arrows fight together, and victory is divined to the party, after which the victorious arrows are named, and they never go to war without trying this mode of divination." The Koran probably refers to this in the chapter which says "O true believers, surely wine and lots, and images and divining arrows, are an abomination of the work of Satan, therefore, avoid them, that ye may prosper." 1 In the preliminary discourse (p. 127), we are told that the arrows used for this purpose were like those with which they cast lots, being without heads or feathers, and were kept in the temple of some idol in whose presence they were consulted. Seven such arrows were kept in the temple of Mecca, and were found in the hands of Abraham and Hobel by Mahomet, but generally in divination they made use of three only, on one of which was written, " My Lord hath commanded me"; on another, " My Lord hath forbidden me," and the third was blank. Divination by means of arrows was practised by Nebuchadnezzar (Ezek. xxi 21); and Potter tells us that this superstitious practice of divining by arrows was used by the ancient Greeks and other nations. 2 There would appear to have been a certain amount of sacredness attached to arrows among the Mexicans, although it is not stated that they were used in divin- ation, for Bancroft writing of the Festival of the month Quecholli, dedicated chiefly to Mexicoatl, god of the chase, says " Canes were gathered, and carried to the temple of the god of war ; there young and old as- sembled for four days to share in the sacred work of making arrows. The arrows were all of uniform length, and were formed into bundles of twenty, carried in pro- 1 Sale's Koran, v. p. 94. 2 Potter's Antiquities of Greece, vol. i. p. 334. DIVINATION BY THE HOD AND BY THE AREOW. 153 cession to the temple of the god, and piled up in front of the idol." 1 The description given of the divining arrows serves to connect them with the very smooth straight sticks which the Alani women are described by Herodotus (iv. 67) as gathering and searching for anxiously, and also with those bundles of myrtle stick with which the Persian Magi, according to Strabo (xv. cap. 3, p. 136), touched their sacrifices, holding them in their hand during their prayers and incantations. These twigs were also held before the perpetual fire on their altars as an act of worship, and there is a very obvious con- nection between both these ceremonies and that very ancient and well-nigh universal practice of casting lots. Among the Anglo-Saxons, lots consisted of pieces of wood from a fruit -bearing tree, which were cast into a white cloth, and this mode of divination, or casting of lots by means of the twig or tan as it was called, was common to all Northern nations, derived, it is said, from the Scythians ; but that which will be of especial interest to the ethnologist, is the fact that at the present day the Hottentot children cast lots by twigs as our Anglo- Saxon ancestors did ; that is, if a thing is lost, or a theft has been committed, they throw bits of stick, and judge of the culprit, or of the direction wherein the lost property is to be found, by the arrangement of the twigs ; and among the Kaffirs bundles of sticks and assegais are employed by the diviners in their rites for the discovery of crime. Among South African peoples also, two bones are used in casting lots, being evidently the primitive form of dice, which can be traced back in their present form to a very remote antiquity, and which, as well as the divining-rod, are connected by legends with Mercury. But probably the most important and significant fact connected with the use of rods, twigs, and arrows in divination, is their very evident bearing upon some of the ancient alphabets. It is impossible to look at the primitive alphabets such as the Phoenician, the Etruscan, 1 Bancroft's Native Races of the Pacific, vol. ii. p. 335. 154 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. the Runic, without being struck with their resemblance to twigs or branches of trees variously arranged. It is worthy of note that the invention of letters is attributed by tradition to the same gods who are famed for their knowledge of magic arts. Thus the Egyptian hiero- glyphics are said to have been invented by Thoth, Taautus, or Hermes, the prime minister of Osiris, who is identified with the Greek Hermes, the Roman Mercury, and also with the Scandinavian Woden, to whom the invention of Runes is attributed both by the Scandinavians and Anglo-Saxons. 1 The connection of Hermes or Mercury with all kinds of magic, but particularly with divination by the rod, has already been shown, and in tracing the magic powers ascribed in early times to letters or runes, it seems obvious that the veneration for the latter arose from their formation from the sacred rods and twigs employed in lots and divinations. The word runa, comes from a word Iker-ru, which signified a secret, and from the same word was derived rynan, to whisper ; rtina, whisperer ; in earlier times a magician and run stafas were mysterious staves. The magical virtues ascribed to runes are well known. " They were divided into bitter runes, employed to bring various evils on their enemies ; the favourable which averted misfortune ; the victorious procuring conquest to those who used them; the medicinal which were inscribed on the leaves of trees for healing ; others served to dispel melancholy thoughts ; to prevent shipwreck ; were anti- dotes against poison ; preservatives against the resent- ment of enemies, and efficacious to render a mistress favourable." 2 We are told that at Lassa (Thibet) some- times the Shamas divine by tracing on a leaf the eight figures koua, and certain Thibetan words ; 3 and Lenor- mant, in detailing the attributes of Waimamb'inen (the friend of the watery element), the atmospheric god of 1 On the Hwiting Treow of the Anglo-Saxons. Archceologia, vol. xlii. 2 Migne, Die. de Mythologie, p. 223. 3 Mallet's Northern Antiquities. DIVINATION BY THE ROD AND BY THE ARROW. 155 the Finns, whom he compares with the Ea of the Chaldseans, says " He is not only king of the waters and of the atmosphere, but the spirit from which flows all life, the master of all favourable enchantments, the vanquisher of all evil, the sovereign possessor of all science. It is he who communicates to men the celestial fire, invents music and incantations. The sweat from his body heals all sickness. He alone can furnish efficacious aid against the charms of sorcerers. He also is the sole depositary of the ' runes of science,' those ' supreme words,' ' creative words,' which he sought in the bosom of the ancient Wipunen, words which give life to all which exists, whose power restrains the gods as well as inferior beings. These words, like the mysterious name of the books of Accad, are the last words of supernatural science ; the enchantment which is superior to all others, and they possess in themselves a supreme virtue independent of him who pronounces them." x It is probable that these mysterious words or signs were marked on the rods used in divination, and imparted to them their virtues. " Thus Galen mentions one Pamphilos, who had written that by means of certain sentences and magic formulae, he could very much in- crease the virtues of herbs," and says of the Chaldeans that "They also frequently used talismans inscribed with various images and symbols, which not only were to prevent and cure sickness, but also and especially for soothsaying." 2 The twigs used as lots by the Anglo-Saxons were marked with certain signs, and General Pitt-Rivers has pointed out the marks made upon their arrows by the Eskimo, perhaps as tokens of ownership, but not improbably also as magic signs, since they are much given to divination ; and it is not a little remarkable that the sign chiefly employed on divining-rods and arrows, both in ancient and modern times, is that of the cross, which in the older mythologies is generally the 1 Kalewala, i. 9, 10, in Lenormant's Magic among the Chaldceans, &c., p. 216. 2 Ennemoser's History of Magic, p. 224. 156 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. symbol of water, or of the god of the atmosphere. This perhaps explains the connection between the divining- rod and water, whilst the form of the rod employed in the search for water may perhaps have some connection with the Etruscan legend, which relates that "An Etruscan ploughman happening to drive his share somewhat deeper than usual, was surprised by the sudden appearance of a boy from beneath the ground. The worthy rustic alarmed the neighbourhood, and in consequence all Etruria resorted to the spot and learned from the lips of the subterranean stranger, who was no other than a god Tages, the doctrines of divination, which were afterwards carefully committed to writing." 1 Hence the Etruscans claimed to be the originators of divination, but that as well as the letters of the alphabet came to Europe apparently from the East. This subterranean god would seem to have some con- nection with the Greek Python, for we are told that those who retained the superstitious customs connected with that worship in Christian times were accustomed to offer a certain perfume, and to move in the hand a magic wand, or divining-rod of myrtle, uttering certain words. Then he who held the rod stooped down as if to consult some one who was underground, and who answered him in so low a voice that he could only understand the spirit of the response, without hearing anything distinctly ; 2 and a further trace of this sub- terranean divinity may probably be found in the word Runa, which Mallet, in his Northern Antiquities, derives from the root Mandragora, designated in Old German Alraun, which root resembles, as is well known, the commonly received form of the divining-rod, and around which cluster a number of old-world superstitions, even to the present day, for it is probable that in many places shrieks and groans would still be expected to follow its forcible extraction from the earth. If I am not mistaken, this root figures in different positions in two or three letters of the Runic alphabet, in which also 1 Encydopcedia Metropolitans, : Article, " Divination." 2 Maimonides, TraiM de VIdolatrie. Lebrun, torn. ii. p. 402. DIVINATION BY THE ROD AND BY THE ARROW. 157 the arrow occurs as representative of the god Tyr. Runes, say travellers, are to be found in Tartary, which certainly is not surprising, if we can trace them to the sticks used in divination, to which all Scythic nations were so much addicted. " Grimm has shown that the Anglo-Saxon Runic alphabet was derived from the Scandinavian, at a period when it had only sixteen letters, and he then attempts to trace the sixteen original runes to a remote Asiatic source, founding his conjectures on their inadequacy to express all the sounds of the Old Norse language, and therefore assuming that they must necessarily have been borrowed from a more primitive tongue." 1 In tracing the ancient alphabets to rods used in divination, it is not without interest to remark, that " of the eighteen letters which at present compose the Irish alphabet, sixteen bear the same name that designate sixteen common trees and shrubs found in the island." " They tell us that the early inhabitants of Ireland brought the knowledge of those letters with them to Ireland, and that these came from a southern region where Irish trees were unknown." 2 The writer in the Ulster Journal of Archaeology, from whom I have just quoted, goes on to say that " These letters appear to have been originally only sixteen, the same number Cadmus brought to Greece ; and that the Irish alphabet has these eight letters less than the Roman, is an unanswered and unanswerable argument against the idea of Ireland having received her ele- mentary characters from Latin sources any more than from the meridian age of classical Greece." 3 In a note on Mr. Kemble's paper on Anglo-Saxon Runes, it is remarked as a singular coincidence that in Welsh the alphabet was called " The lot of the Bards." 4 That a very intimate connection subsisted between the arts of divination by rods or arrows, the casting of lots, and the primitive alphabets, cannot, I think, be doubted. It is a significant fact that just in those 1 Mallet's Northern Antiquities, p. 23. 2 Ulster Journal of Archceoloyy, vol. iii. p. 15. 3 Ibid. 4 Archceologia, xxviii. 158 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. regions of Asia where arrows were principally used in divination, there we find the cuneiform or arrow- headed characters in use. 1 It would moreover appear that both divination and the primitive alphabets originated with that very early semi-civilized race, which seems to have spread over the whole world prior to the rise of Aryan supremacy, a race generally, although perhaps not very correctly, denominated Turanian, and which has certainly left traces in the language, religion, and customs of almost all nations quite alien to Aryan culture. This race, by whatever name it may be designated, may, I believe, be identified with that serpent race of which I have treated in a previous chapter as the originators of agriculture and metallurgy in their earliest form. Maurice, in his History of Hindostan, says " Naga, in its primary sense, signifies diviner. ''The pre-Aryan population of India, and the Scythians, pre-eminently diviners, doubtless belong to this race, as did also the Etruscans, according to Canon Isaac Taylor, and they likewise were noted as soothsayers and diviners. Le- normant traces an underlying Turanian population in Chaldsea, Persia, and among the Eskimo. Ethnologists find remnants of the same race among the short dark peoples of Europe, especially in Ireland, and it may be laid down as a general rule that wherever these are found there also will the arts of divination yet linger. In America, to which I believe this race may be 1 The author of the article on Alphabets in the Encyclopedia Britannica says "It seems clear that the origin of this (cuneiform) system was Turanian, and that it was borrowed by the Semitic races who used it. Cuneiform characters were used in Persia, Assyria, Babylonia, and also among the old Scythian population of Media, who used a Turanian speech." Speaking of ranes, the same writer says " It is probable both from the meaning of the word Rutie (a secret), and from the evidence of foreign writers, that these symbols were not used by their owners for any of the ordinary ends of an alphabet." Runes were cut on smoothed ash boughs, and were used as magical symbols and also as means of augury, and for this reason they were proscribed to Christians. DIVINATION BY THE ROD AND BY THE ARROW. 159 traced by the arts of agriculture and metallurgy, I have already pointed out the symbols of divination, the ring and staff and the forked stick as sculptured on the rocks in Peru, whilst everywhere, but especially in Mexico and Central America, may be seen the pre- Christian cross, the symbol there, as in the Old World, of the elements, and particularly of water ; but intercourse with America would appear to have ceased before that further development of divining-rods, twigs, and arrows into alphabets, since the American system of writing was by hieroglyphics. It appears to me a subject worthy of investigation whether there really exists among the races designated inferior a certain power which has been eliminated from the more highly-developed Aryan. It cannot be denied that certain of the lower animals are endowed with faculties (or instincts) far more keen than can be found in the human race, although some of these are shared to a small extent by savages, and it may well be that those more nearly allied by blood to the earlier races, may retain more of those occult affinities with nature shown by the lower animals, than the highly- cultured man of civilized Europe. After making every possible allowance for trickery, the effects of imag- ination and religious excitement, there remains a substratum in the marvels related of the old magicians of Egypt and Chaldaea, and in those of their modern representatives in India and elsewhere, which has never been satisfactorily accounted for by the teachers of science. In this category may be placed the success- ful use of the divining-rod in the present day, and that singular magnetic influence, which under the name of hypnotism is now making so great a sensation. These things, however, belong rather to psychology than to anthropology, and must be left to scientific investigators. My endeavour has been rather to trace the origin and geographical distribution of a curious superstition and its bearing upon early inventions, than to investi- gate the truth or falsehood of an assumed power. CHAPTER XI. BIRDS IN THE MYTHOLOGIES OF VARIOUS RACES. 1 Birds as Symbols of Ancient Divinities The Goose Sacred in India, Ceylon, Egypt, Home, and Ancient Britain A Turanian Totem Transformed into the Swan among Aryans The Peacock in India Emblem of Juno denoting her Eastern Origin The Owl of Evil Augury Minerva's Owl perhaps the Cuckoo, or Minerva the Chief Divinity of Owl Tribe The Phoenix An Astronomical Myth The Hawk in Egypt, India, and Persia Fijian Legend Mexican Bird- Serpent The Vulture, Emblem of Maut Worn as Head-dress in Egypt and China Bird of Augury The Cock Symbol of Osiris and Durga Sacred to Mars, Apollo, and Esculapius Of Sepulchral Significance in Etruria Sacri- ficed to the Sun in Scotland The Dove the Bird of Venus Symbol of the Soul in Etruria Connection with the Mundane Egg The Eagle Special Symbol of Aryan Races Legendary Antipathy to Serpents denotes Race Antagonism The Eagle in Mexico and in India Legend of the Mundane Egg in many Lands. BIRDS were used as emblems of almost all the very ancient divinities; but, notwithstanding the great variety which have thus been employed, it seems possible to select some birds as peculiarly adopted by certain races, so as to render their presence in the mythologies of other races, ground for a belief in an admixture, or of the conquest, of one by the other. Among Turanian races, I think we shall find a pre- ference given to the goose or swan, the hawk and the peacock ; among the Semites, to the dove; and among the Aryans, to the eagle; and although these birds are often supplemented by others, yet they stand out as more decidedly distinctive of race than any others. 1 See Journal of the Anthropological Institute, February 1875. BIRDS IN THE MYTHOLOGIES OF VARIOUS RACES. 161 I. Closely following in the track of the serpent, often, but not always, associated with, and generally running parallel to it, we find the Hansa, or sacred Brahminical GOOSE, still adored in Ceylon and Burmah, and which appears to have been almost the earliest bird to receive divine honours. On all the temples of India whereon the worship of the serpent is delineated, the goose also occurs as an ornament, or as in some way connected with the mysterious worship of that deadly reptile. Sir E. Tennant says " There is something still unexplained in the extraordinary honours paid to the goose by the ancients, and the veneration in which it is held to the present day by some of the Eastern nations." The figure that occurs so frequently on Buddhist monuments is the Brahminical goose (casarka rotila), which is not a native of Ceylon, but from time im- memorial has been an object of veneration there and in all parts of India. Among the Buddhists 1 especially, the hansa has attracted attention by its periodical migrations, which are supposed to be directed to the holy lake of Manasa in the mythical regions of the Himalaya. The poet Kalidasa, in his Cloud Messen- gers, speaks of the hansa as " Eager to set out for the sacred lake." Hence, according to the Rajavali, the lion was pre-eminent among beasts, but the hansa was king over all the feathered tribe. " The goose is at the present day the national emblem emblazoned on the standard of Burmah, and the brass weights of the Burmese and Javanese are generally cut in the shape of the sacred bird, just as the Egyptians formed their weights of stone after the same model." 2 Sir Gardiner Wilkinson thinks that the Egyptians did not pay divine honours to the goose, although it was the emblem of Seb, the father of Osiris, but upon this see note by Dr. Birch, in Sir E. Tennant's Ceylon (p. 487). The reason assigned for the veneration in which this bird was held by the ancients, is its fondness 1 It is remarked that Buddhism is peculiarly the religion of Turanian races. 2 Tennant's Ceylon, p. 484. M 162 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. for its young. Aristotle praises its sagacity, ^Elian dilates on its courage and cunning, and its attach- ment to man, and Ovid ranks the goose as superior to the dog in the scale of intelligence ; it was, as we know, one of the emblems of Juno, and it was the sacred geese kept in her temple which saved the Capitol from the invasion of the Gauls ; but it is a singular fact that this superstitious veneration for the goose, which seems to have originated in the East, had found its way to Britain before the time of Csesar, who relates " that the ancient Britons held it impious to eat the flesh of the goose " ; yet Wilkinson tells us that it was eaten largely in Egypt, even in those places where Seb, to whom it was sacred, was worshipped. Leslie, in his Early Races of Scotland, says, " The glorifi- cation of the goose in the West was by no means confined to the Britons, who did not derive this feeling from, although they shared it with, the classical nations of Europe," and in commenting upon the figures engraved on the Scottish stones, adds, " In the Pagan and Planetary worship of Ceylon, three of the figures commonly traced by the person who performs the ceremonies are, the elephant, the goose, and the crescent for the moon, and all these emblems are found on the Scottish stones." Finding such peculiar emblems in two countries so remote from each other as Ceylon and Scotland, and knowing that in the latter country elephants have not existed, at least, during the historic period, the question naturally arises how the super- stitions of Asia could have found their way to a land so unknown and barbarous as we are apt to imagine Scotland to have been at the period which the most moderate computation assigns as the date of the erection of these Scottish stones. That there must have been a/direct intercourse/is evident, for it seems impossible that the same symbols could have originated spontaneously in two countries wholly unconnected, and in one of which the elephant was wholly unknown. That the superstitious veneration for the goose originated among a Turanian people in the age of BIRDS IN THE MYTHOLOGIES OF VARIOUS RACES. 163 Totemism seems certain, when we observe how it still lingers among that race in Asia, and there only among the Tamul-speaking people. Fergusson, in his Tree and Serpent Worship, shows us that wherever the Dasyus or Aborigines are represented at Sanchi in water-scenes, there are geese represented also ; but they are not seen with the Hindus. Then it appears also to have been intimately associ- ated with the serpent-myth and the doctrine of the mundane egg ; it has been seen that it co-existed with that venerable myth in Britain before the time of Csssar, whose words are confirmed by existing monu- ments on which both symbols are found together, a similar conjunction occurring in a bronze knife or dagger of serpentine form having a goose for the handle, discovered in Denmark, 1 as well as in the sculptures of India and Ceylon as already pointed out; but the goose does not appear ever to have been so universally adored as the serpent. It was perhaps the totem of some early powerful Turanian tribe, adopted by alliance into some serpent tribes, but not necessarily supplemental to the serpent everywhere . Thus I have failed to trace it in many countries where the serpent-myth undoubtedly prevailed, whilst in others it was evidently connected with it. Whenever it does appear, it is always an emblem of the most ancient of the gods, having an Eastern and pre- Aryan origin ; thus in Greece, and afterwards in Rome, we find it among the symbols of Hera or Juno, a goddess whose whole surroundings are Eastern, and who is often spoken of as the first-born of Chronus or Saturn, being certainly older than Jupiter, and who may be identified Avith Saraswati, the sacti or consort of Brahma, whose emblem was also the goose or swan, and these two Indian divinities are said to have formed the great mundane egg. There are circumstances in the history of Brahma which would lead us to suppose that he was adopted into the Hindu mythology from an earlier race, for although he is looked upon as the creator, he has no 1 Sir John Lubbock's Pre-historic Times, p. 34. 164 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. temples, and comparatively few worshippers among the Hindoos ; then also his connection with the mundane egg seems to denote his pre- Aryan origin, for it is remarked that the doctrine of the mundane egg belongs only to the earliest cosmogonies. (See an article on " Demonology " in Fraser's Magazine for November and December 1872.) Moor, in his Hindu Pantheon, observes that Brahma is never seen seated on his emblem or vehicle, as other gods are, but he gives an example of Saraswati, his consort, seated upon a paddy- bird instead of a goose, observing that this bird is like- wise denominated Hanasa in India, and that the same name (Hahnsy) is applied to the heron in some parts of England. Sir E. Tennant likewise tells us that the ibis is denominated Abou-Hansa by the Arabs, and this similarity in the names of different birds may account for some confusion which may be observed in their mythological use. II. Moor gives the goose or SWAN as the emblem of Brahma, and here too we may trace the engrafting of Aryan myth upon a Turanian stock. The goose was undoubtedly the original symbol, as seen by the ancient monuments of India, Ceylon, and Britain; but the Aryans transformed this goose into the more graceful swan of the northern hemisphere, and henceforward the goose disappears, excepting among the aborigines, or is looked upon with contempt, and all the later legends cluster round the swan, making that a bird of mystery and romance, whilst the goose is looked upon, as the pelican was of old, as the type of a fool ; yet a singular instance of a survival of old beliefs may be noted here, for we are told, that the first crusaders marched to battle led by a goose and a goat, which they asserted were filled by the Holy Spirit. The swan-legends are chiefly traceable to the north, the native home of the swan, but there is an Indian myth of the Apsaras or swan-maidens, who are supposed to be impersonations of the cirrus clouds. Mr. Baring Gould, in his Myths of the Middle Ages, supposes the Greek Muses to be representatives of the Indian BIRDS IN THE MYTHOLOGIES OF VARIOUS RACES. 165 Apsaras, and relates the Cyprian legend in which Nemesis, flying in pursuit of Zeus, took the form of a swan, and dropped an egg from which issued Helen, and quotes many mediaeval legends in which maidens are transformed into swans ; and to one of these Godfrey of Bouillon traced his origin. It would be interesting to discover whether the red swan of the American Indian tradition, supposed to represent the setting sun, as given by Longfellow in his song of Hiawatha, is really a swan or the red goose of the Nile, and thus another link between the Old World and the New. III. Saraswati, the consort of Brahma, is sometimes seen mounted on . a PEACOCK, which bird, next to the goose, plays a conspicuous part in Eastern tradition. The peacock is the emblem in India of Kartika, the Indian Mars, the second son of Brahma and Saraswati, of whom a legend is related that " he sprang from the central eye of Siva, to destroy the giant Souraparpma, whom he cut in two, and the severed monster assumed the shape of a peacock and a cock, the former of which the victor determined to use as a vehicle, and the latter to be borne in his standard." The connection between the peacock and the goose is alluded to in a jataka still found in Ceylon, which is given by Fergusson in his Tree and Serpent Worship. The royal Hansa assembled all his subjects in an extensive plain, that his daughter might choose a husband from among them. She choose the peacock, at which the vain bird was so elated that he raised his tail and made such a display as to disgust the king, who, in consequence, broke off the match Pococke says, " The peacock," according to Colonel Tod, " was a favourite armorial emblem of the Rajpoot warrior ; it is the bird sacred to their Mars (Kumara), as it was to Juno, his mother, in the West." 1 The peacock plume is still a warlike badge in China and Japan, and fans of peacock feathers are carried before Eastern monarchs, as they are also before the Pope. The fact of Hera or Juno having both 1 Pococke's India in Greece. 166 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. the goose and the peacock assigned to her, serves not only to denote her Eastern and pre-Aryan origin, but also to identify her with Saraswati or Brahmi, the sacti or consort of Brahma, whose attributes in the Greek and Roman mythologies seem to have been divided between Juno and Minerva. Argus the hundred- eyed, Juno's watchful messenger, whose eyes she trans- ferred to the peacock, bears a strong affinity to the Indian Indra, the watchful guardian of the heavens, the regent of the winds, who is always represented as covered with eyes; and it must be noted that Juno had evidently some connection with atmospheric phe- nomena, the rainbow being her constant attendant. IV. It is strange that the bird assigned to Minerva should have been the OWL, which all over the world is deemed a bird of ill omen ; so much so, that in India, at the present day, if an owl alights on the hut of a native, it is burnt or pulled down as polluted. In the Indian zodiac, the headless Rahu, representing the Dragon's tail, is seated on a brown owl. We read in the Universal History, that " The Arabs held the owl in great abhorrence, as imagining that it always brought ill news and portended something bad;" but there is an owl tribe among the Konds of India, and it is frequently represented in Egyptian hieroglyphics, although it does not appear to have been among the sacred animals. In Prescott's Mexico we read " The Mexicans, accord- ing to Clavigero, believed in an evil spirit, the enemy of the human race, whose barbarous name signified ' rational owl/ and the curate Bernaldez speaks of the devil being embroidered on the dresses of the Indians of Columbus in the likeness of an owl;" but among the Mexican antiquities I find no representation of this bird, unless a bird resembling the cuckoo be intended for it. "The owl was regarded by Aztecs, Quiche's, Mayas, Peruvians, Araucanians, and Algon- quins, as sacred to the lord of the dead, and was one of the names of the Mexican Pluto, whose realm was in the north. As the bird of night, it was a fit emissary BIRDS IN THE MYTHOLOGIES OF VABIOUS EACES. 167 of him who rules the darkness of the grave." 1 At first it seemed to me probable that Minerva's bird was originally the cuckoo, which we find constantly associ- ated with divination and augury, and which is one of the birds assigned to Juno ; and this I imagined from the fact that to Athena or Minerva is assigned the instruction of mankind in the useful arts, particularly agriculture, and if my theory of the origin of the use of metals be correct, then the serpent, being one of her emblems, would connect her with the primitive serpentine race of metal-workers. We are told that even now, in some parts of Germany, the call of the cuckoo is thought to disclose mines ; and certain plants, the cuckoo-bread and cuckoo-flower, are believed to grow in most luxuriance where the depths of the earth are rich in metal. 2 But Dr. Schliemann's discoveries of owl-headed divinities on the supposed site of ancient Troy, would serve to show that Minerva's bird was really the owl, as connected with the rising sun ; or rather, perhaps, that she was the chief divinity of an ancient owl-tribe, and was thus represented in these ancient sculptures with the form of her totem. Brinton suggests that the owl obtained a character for wisdom, because she works while others sleep. V. One of the most celebrated mythological birds of Eastern origin was the PHCENIX, which Philostratus says came from India to Egypt, adding that the phoenix, when about to burn himself, sings a dying hymn, which recalls to us the fable of the death-song of the swan, which is associated with the phoenix in some traditions. 3 Traces of the phoenix are found in China, where it is called Fong-Hoang, the bird of prosperity, and the forerunner of the golden age ; 4 but it was in Egypt that the legend obtained its greatest celebrity. It is thus given by the Rev. J. H. Ingram in 1 Brinton's Myths of the New World. 2 Quarterly Review, July 1863 : Article, " Sacred Trees and Flowers." 3 Creuzer's Religions de TAutiquite. 4 Du Halde's China. 168 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. the Pillar of Fire " The phoenix, of which there is but one in the world, comes flying from the East once in 651 years, many other birds bearing it company. It reaches Heliopolis, the city of the sun, about the time of the vernal equinox, where it burns itself upon the roof of the temple, in the fire of the concentrated rays of the sun as they are reflected from the golden shield thereon with consuming radiance. No sooner is it consumed to ashes, than an egg appears in the funeral pyre, which the heat which consumed the parent warms instantly into life, and out of it the same phcenix comes forth in full plumage, and flying away, returns no more till 651 years have expired. This myth is supposed to relate to the transit of the planet Mercury, which once in 651 years enters the flames of the sun on nearly the same day of the year." x There can be no doubt that some astronomical fact was veiled beneath the allegorical phcenix, but it would seem to me rather to symbolize the belief of early astronomers in the destruction by fire and new creation of the world after certain lengthened periods. Rawlinson, in his edition of Herodotus, tells us that the " Benno, 2 or bird of Osiris, was the true phoenix, and represented the pure soul of the king." VI. But probably the most sacred of all the birds of Egypt was the HAWK or osprey, the emblem of Ra, the sun, who is often represented as a man with the head of a hawk, surmounted by a globe or disk of the sun, from which the Urseus or sacred asp issues. 3 Kneph, the great god of the Egyptians, is represented 1 The period assigned to the phoenix varies from 800 to 1461 years, according to different authors. 2 This Benno was a species of ibis or stork, and here we pro- bably get a clue to the confusion existing between the hansa or goose, the swan and the ibis. It has been seen that the goose was sacred to Seb, the father of Osiris ; hieroglyphically it denoted a son, and it would seem natural that the son should assume the father's totem ; but probably from the superior use- fulness of the ibis in Egypt, it would in time supersede the goose, and become identified or confounded with the older emblem. a Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians. BIRDS IN THE MYTHOLOGIES OF VARIOUS RACES. 169 as a serpent with the head of a hawk. Porphyry says " The hawk was dedicated to the sun, being the symbol of light and spirit, because of the quickness of its motion and its ascent to the higher regions of the air"; and the Universal History tells us that " The hawk was deified because one of those birds in ancient times brought a book to the priests, of Thebes, tied round with a scarlet thread, containing the rites and cere- monies which were to be observed in the worship of the gods; for which reason the sacred scribes wore a scarlet fillet with a hawk's feather on their heads." It is singular to find this story reproduced in an Indian fable, in which the eagle of Krishna (who is an in- carnation of Vishnu) pursues the serpent (Buddha) and recovers the books of science and religion with which he had fled. Upon which Pococke observes, "Did Buddha or Mercury come from or escape to the Nile ? Is he the Hermes of Egypt, to whom the four books of science, the Vedas of the Hindoos, were sacred ? " 1 It must be remembered that the first Avatar or in- carnation of Vishnu in the form of a fish was in order to recover the sacred books from the ocean, the emblem of Vishnu being the man-eagle Garuda, probably origin- ally the hawk or Brahmany kite. In Persia we find the hawk used as emblematic of Ormuzd; and it is very remarkable to find the hawk in connection with the primogenial egg, and the serpent, showing itself in the traditions of Fiji, where, we are told, " Their account of the creation is that a small kind of hawk built its nest near the dwelling of Ndengei (their serpent god), and when it had laid two eggs the god was so pleased with their appearance that he resolved to hatch them himself, and in due time were produced two human infants, a boy and a girl." 2 A legend of the Quiches, attributes the creation to the bird-serpent, and the picture writings of the Mixtecs preserved a similar cosmogony. Two winds, called the nine serpents and the nine caverns, are represented as a bird and a 1 Pococke's India in Greece, p. 188. 2 Williams' Fiji and the Fijians. 170 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. winged serpent. 1 It was probably the figure of the hawk or vulture, as sacred to the sun, which was one of the marks made or found on the bull Apis. VII. As the hawk was the emblem of Ha, the male sun. and of Amun-ra, who appears in Egyptian mythology as the king and father of the gods, so the VULTURE became the emblem of the female divinities connected with the sun, probably because it was sup- posed that vultures were all females. Thus the vulture was the emblem of Maut, the mother of all, and of Neith, the Egyptian Minerva, and it was worn as a head-dress by queens, even as a similar bird is still worn by ladies of rank in China. The vulture appears very frequently in Egyptian hieroglyphics, and among the objects found in a tumulus in the neighbourhood of Astrabad, the ancient Hyrcania, in Parthia, was a gold lamp with a long spout, evidently designed for religious rites, and weighing seventy ounces, on which is depicted the vulture of the Caucasus, employed, doubtless, as a sacred symbol. 2 The vulture was one of the chief birds of augury among the Etruscans, and thence held a similar rank in Rome, and every one will remember the trial of the rival pretensions of Romulus and Remus by the flight of vultures; Remus first observed six vultures and claimed the augury, but immediately afterwards Romulus saw twelve, which his partisans declared to be decisive of victory. VIII. One of the most widely distributed of mytho- logical birds is the COCK. In India it is dedicated to Parvati, the consort of Siva, now worshipped as the sanguinary Durga. 3 In Egypt it was one of the symbols of Osiris, and we are told that it was esteemed by the ancients as the emblem of valour and of love ; and upon the shield of Idomeneus, dedicated to Jupiter, near the great temple of Agrigentum, the cock appears as the symbol of the sun. In Greece and Rome it was sacred to Mars, to Apollo, and to Esculapius, and was 1 Brinton's Myths of the New World. 2 Archaeologist, vol. xxx. 3 Moor's Hindu Pantheon. BIRDS IN THE MYTHOLOGIES OF VARIOUS RACES. 171 the national emblem of the Celts, as it still is of the French ; but we are surprised to find it occupying a prominent place among the sculptures of Mexico. 1 In Etruria it appears to have had a sepulchral signification, for we find it adorning many of the urns, where it is supposed to denote prosperity to the dead. 2 In Leslie's Early Races of Scotland we are told that the cock was the usual sacrifice offered to the sun. In Scotland, burying a live cock is described as a remedy for insanity, and even in late years the same remedy has been resorted to for epilepsy, and witches were accused of sacrificing cocks. They are still sacrificed in India when cholera or small-pox is raging ; and when a man is dying, the Parsees bring in a dog and a cock to sacrifice, the cock to receive the good spirit and the dog the bad. In Sale's introduction to the Koran, he states that the idolatry of the Arabs as Sabeans, previous to Mahomet, chiefly consisted in worshipping the fixed stars and planets, also that at their various places of pilgrimage they sacrificed a cock. Layard describes a gem found at Babylon, on which was engraved a winged priest or deity standing in an attitude of prayer before a cock on an altar, and above the group a crescent moon, adding that the Hebrew commentators conjecture that Nergal, the idol of the men of Cuth, had the form of a cock. He also describes an idol of the Yezidis called the Melek Taous, which is a rude figure of a bird like a cock on a stand of copper or brass. 3 IX. When we come to consider the DOVE as a sacred bird, we shall see that it originated with, and is chiefly confined to, Semitic races, and always has some reference to Venus. We are told that neither doves nor pigeons were sacred in Egypt, nor do we find them depicted upon the rude stone monuments of early date, nor among the Mexican sculptures. There is one Indian legend connected with the dove, but whether 1 Le Noir's Mexican Antiquities. 2 Dennis's Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria. 3 Layard's Ninereh. 172 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. of late or early date I know not. It is thus given in Moor's Hindu Pantheon " Agni arriving in the presence of Siva, and assuming the form of a dove, received from him the germ of Carticeya (Mars), but, unable to retain it, let it fall into the Ganges, on the banks of which river arose a boy, beautiful as the moon and bright as the sun, who was called the son of Agni (Fire)." The dove appears frequently in Etruscan tombs, and Dennis says : " It is supposed, not without reason, that the souls of the deceased are sometimes symbolized on the monuments as birds, especially doves." That doves were emblems of divinities in Oriental mythology is well known ; Mithras, the great deity of the Persians, was so symbolized. In Arabia we are told that among the idols of the Caaba there was a wooden pigeon, as likewise another above, to destroy which Mohammed lifted Ali upon his shoulder. 1 But the fable of the dove seems to have originated in Syria, where it was connected with the birth of Astarte or Aphrodite, hence called Dea Syria. 2 Of Semiramis the legend says that she was the daughter of the fish goddess, Derceto, who, being exposed by her mother, was miraculously preserved by doves, and, after a long and glorious reign over Babylon, disappeared from the earth, taking her flight to heaven in the form of a dove. In this fable we see the con- nection between the soul and the bird, which is common to so many races, and also the birth of the Goddess of Beauty from water, which is related of the Greek Aphrodite, the Roman Venus, the Syrian Astarte, and is traceable in India, where Rhemba, of Indra's court, who seems to correspond with the popular Venus, the Goddess of Beauty, was produced, according to the Indian fabulists, from the froth of the churned ocean. The connection between this goddess and her doves with the mundane egg is very remarkable. In India this egg is produced by Brahma, whose emblem is the goose or swan ; in Syria it is transferred to the dove. 1 Universal History, vol. xxviii. 2 Encyclopaedia Britannica, sub voc. " Mythology." BIRDS IN THE MYTHOLOGIES OF VARIOUS RACES. 173 In the Chinese legends the earth egg floats hither and thither upon the waves until it grows to a continent. In the Finnish epic of Kalewala the eagle floated over the waves and hatched the land. In Scandinavia the earth is formed from the flesh of the giant Ymer, and set to float like a speck on the vast sea between Mispel and Nitiheim. But wherever these legends of the mundane egg are found, they may be traced to that old Turanian cosmogony which makes the world resemble an egg in form, having its origin in the water. Eggs were formerly suspended in many temples, and we are told they are still so suspended in mosques. Both ostrich and hen's eggs are found in the tombs of Etruria, sometimes painted or carved, and sometimes imitated in pottery, 1 and thus a veneration for eggs may be traced downwards from the early Turanian races, among whom they were revered as the source and origin of all things, to our own Easter eggs, typical of Christ and the resurrection. X. It is when we come to consider the EAGLE, the king of birds, that we find ourselves gradually emerging from the dark night of mythology. We have seen the hawk or osprey revered in Egypt as the emblem of Osiris and other gods in their character as sun deities, we have seen the same bird in distant Fiji producing the primogenial egg, and we find it in India as the emblem of Vishnu, the preserver. It is in this latter country that we can trace most clearly the process whereby the hawk, revered by Turanian races, became converted into the eagle, the chosen type of the Aryans in all countries. The Garuda, or eagle of Vishnu, evi- dently remounts to the age of Totemism. It is repre- sented both in sculptures and paintings as a man with hooked nose and eagle's wings and talons ; even when he bears Vishnu on his shoulders he is still only a winged man. In the Elephanta cave, Vishnu is represented as seated on, or bestriding, Garuda's shoulders, with his legs in front, Garuda holding him on by the ankles, and Garuda is represented as a winged man, with a wig, 1 Dennis's Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria. 174 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. hooked nose, and eagle's claws. It was the part of Vishnu and his consort, Laksmi, to preserve the mundane egg, formed by Brahma, from destruction, when cut in half by Siva, the destroyer. There can be little doubt that these three famous Indian gods are subdivisions of one primary god of nature. They and their consorts are all fabled to have been children of the Indian Isis, or Nature personified, and their con- nection with the great mundane egg points to a very early pre-Aryan origin. It is easy to imagine that the Aryans, coming from a northern land where eagles abounded, would soon convert the hawk, osprey, or Brahmany kite revered by the natives, into the more familiar and superior bird of their native rocks, and thus we find that the vehicle of Krishna, a later in- carnation of Vishnu, is no longer the Garuda, the Totemic divinity, part man, part hawk or eagle, and perhaps part phcenix, but has become a genuine eagle. In his form as Garuda he is known as Nag-anteka, the destroyer of serpents ; and this legendary antipathy of the eagle to serpents occurs in many other countries, as in Scandinavia, where the squirrel causes strife between the serpent which gnaws the root of yggdrasil, and the eagle which sits in the branches. The same character is assigned to the eagle in Mexico, where that bird hold- ing a serpent in its beak forms the modern standard. Now, even accepting Prescott's date (1326) for the foundation of modern Mexico, it is abundantly evident that two or more civilized races occupied the country at a much earlier date. We read of the Mayas, who came from the Antilles when the country was peopled by the Quinamies, to whom the Cyclopean erections still extant are attributed. They were overthrown by Votan B.C. 800. To the Mayas succeeded the Aztecs and the Toltecs. According* to existing monuments, one of these races bore a striking resemblance to the Egyptians, both in feature and dress, and doubtless also in religion, the serpent being a very prominent object in their sculptures. The other race is very distinct in feature and dress, the extreme prominence of the nose giving BIRDS IN THE MYTHOLOGIES OF VARIOUS RACES. 175 them almost a Jewish appearance, but in all probability they belonged to the Caucasian race, and bore some affinity to the hook-nosed Garuda, the destroyer of serpents of Indian sculptures, and, in whatever way they got to Mexico, they very evidently carried with them the legend of the serpent-destroying eagle. We find this same widely-spread myth in Greece and Rome, where Zeus or Jupiter, whose special emblem was the eagle, wars with and overcomes the Titans, who were serpentine divinities, represented as such, by their lower extremities terminating in serpents' tails. It existed also in Egypt, but there it is represented by the hawk- headed Horus piercing the gigantic serpent, Apophis. It appears to me that, tracing this myth in all countries, it represents the conquest of aboriginal or long-estab- lished tribes by superior and generally Aryan races. The serpent was the undoubted emblem of a Turanian people, and it was adopted everywhere to symbolize the natives, the sons of the soil, aborigines, as they might well have been deemed by the conquering race, although perhaps in many cases they too were settlers, the pioneers of that Turanian civilization which would appear from all existing traditions and monuments to have been carried by larger or smaller bodies of emigrants, from Central Asia over a great part of the world, introducing wherever they went sun-worship, commingled with that of deceased ancestors, the egg and serpent cosmogony, a knowledge of the rudiments of metallurgy, astronomy, cyclopean architecture, and the construction of mounds and tumuli, developing later into the pyramid. Perhaps a more careful and elaborate inquiry into these matters will enable us in time to affix some approximate date to those early migrations which un- doubtedly took place in pre-historic times, and the countries from which those migrations emanated; but it appears to me that language would here be a very fallacious guide, for supposing, as is most probable, a small band of men, carried unintentionally by some ocean current to a foreign shore ; they might indeed 176 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. have been received by the rude savages among whom they were cast as gods in human form, and have suc- ceeded in imparting to them their superior civilization ; but they could never have imposed upon them their language. On the contrary, they would themselves adopt the language of the multitude, and, being few in number, would in time become so amalgamated with the natives, as to leave behind them only a tradition, and those indestructible records of their connection with the old Asiatic world to be found in monuments, legends, and peculiar customs. These unintentional migrations may have occurred many times in the world's history, at different epochs and from various points, which would account for the variations observable in the civilization of Peru and Mexico, and other American countries which, having had apparently no commu- nication with each other, yet present, in the midst of remarkable differences, certain peculiar points of resemblance. A glance at a map of ocean currents will show that a frail vessel from the coasts of Asia, drawn into some of these, would be carried by them to the American shore just at those points where the most decided traces of Asiatic civilization are to be found. Undoubtedly one of the many clues to this inquiry will be found in the range of certain mythological birds, which, as I have endeavoured to point out, are peculiarly adopted by certain races. Wherever we find serpent traditions, and with them the egg as the origin of the world or of the primeval pair, there we generally find the goose, the swan, or the hawk, revered as the emblem of the principal divinity, and this goose or hawk is often con- founded or identified with the phoenix, which appears to combine in itself the form and plumage of the hawk, the goose, and the peacock, all pre-eminently Turanian birds; and, although we find the egg sacred also in Semitic Assyria in connection with the dove, it is never supposed to have been laid by that bird, nor does it appear in connection with the serpent or the formation of the world ; but it is a large egg falling from heaven, BIRDS IN THE MYTHOLOGIES OF VARIOUS RACES. 177 hatched by doves, and from it proceeds, not the world, or the first man and woman, but Astarte or Venus, the Goddess of Beauty, and this change in the character of tlie egg would appear to me to be owing to the engraft- ing of later Semitic beliefs upon the old Turanian cosmogony which orce flourished in Chaldaea. Whether the eagle-headed divinity so prominent in Assyrian sculptures was also originally the Turanian hawk, the peculiar emblem of the sun-god in Egypt and elsewhere, or whether it was the germ from which sprang the Aryan eagle, it is difficult to determine ; but I should be inclined to think it was at first the hawk, modified later under Aryan influences into the eagle, as was the case with Garuda in India. In Persia the dove was the emblem of Mithras, the sun-god, but we find that the eagle \\as the royal bird, emblematic of Ormuzd, and we are told by Creuzer, that the chief of the eunuchs always endeavoured to give to the nose of the prince royal the form of an eagle's beak, in honour of Cyrus, whose nose was of that shape. In noticing the eagle as pre-eminently the bird of the Aryans, two or three marked peculiarities in his history must be borne in mind. First, he is always the emblem of the younger, but more potent, divinities, who have conquered or superseded the older gods ; thus he is the emblem of Krishna in India a late incarna- tion of Vishnu ; and even as Garuda, the vehicle of Vishnu, is called ths younger brother of Arun, the charioteer of Indra, the old nature god of the aborigines, and although he is fabled to have sprung from the egg of Diti, the wife of the Indian Casyapa or Uranus, it was only after the lapse of five hundred years when he destroys the serpents, and seizes the water of life. In Greece and Rome he is the favourite emblem of Zeus and Jupiter, those younger divinities who over- came Chronos and Saturn, and reigned in their stead ; but there he never has any connection with the great mundane egg. If this egg appears at all in Grecian and Roman mythology, it is apparently only as a sur- vival of older beliefs, and is always associated, not with N 178 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. the eagle, but with the swan the Aryan form, as I believe, of the old Turanian goose. But the great and peculiar characteristic of this bird is his strongly- marked antagonism to the serpent, denoted in India by his name nag-antika, snake-destroyer an antagonism which I believe to symbolize an antagonism of race, and to denote the conquest of the old Turanian serpent- worshippers by the aggressive Aryans. With regard to the phoenix, that enigma of the ancient world, Mr. Tylor gives a Chinese legend, which seems to point to the origin of this myth. " A great sage went to walk beyond the bounds of the moon and the sun ; he saw a tree, and on the tree a bird, which pecked at it and made fire come forth ; the sage was struck with this, took a branch and produced fire from it." l The sculptures of Nineveh and Babylon, representing the eagle Nisrock perched on the sacred tree or cross, have possibly some reference to the Chinese myth, and we are told in Baring Gould's Myths of the Middle Ages, that in the depths of the forests of Central America, in a palace founded, according to tradition, in the ninth century B.C., there is a sculptured cross, surrounded with rich feather-work and ornamental chains, and above the cross a bird of peculiar character, perched as we see the eagle, Nisrock, on the cross. In the Athapascan myth, a raven saved their ancestors from the general flood, and this is identified with the great thunder- bird, who brought, in the beginning, the earth from the depths. Prometheus-like, it brought fire from heaven, and saved them from a second death by cold. Precisely the same benefits were attributed by the Natchez to the small red cardinal bird. 2 Now the phoenix is undoubtedly the true fire-bird. 3 Flying from the East, he goes to immolate himself by fire in the Temple of the Sun, at Heliopolis, and out of 1 Tylor's Early History of Mankitid. 2 Brinton's Myths of the New World. 3 The Robin and the Wren are both fire-birds in European myths, and the history of these two birds is full of interest. BIRDS IN THE MYTHOLOGIES OF VARIOUS RACES. 179 his ashes comes an egg, from which proceeds a worm, which rapidly develops into a young phoenix in full feather, who flies away eastward, to return again after five or six hundred years, and himself perish in the same manner by fire. Another version tells us of the newly-born phoenix taking a ball of myrrh of the weight of his father's body, hollowing it out, and enclosing the dead body therein, and then flying with this egg of myrrh to Heliopolis, there to consume it by fire. Now the remarkable thing in this legend is that it seems to combine in itself the germs of all the religions which prevailed in the pre-Aryan world. We see in it, sun- worship and sacrifice by fire to that great deity. We see in it the egg and the worm or serpent, both so highly revered everywhere in the ancient world, and we may also trace in it that reverence for ancestors so characteristic of Turanian races, shown by the care with which the young phoenix embalms his father's body in myrrh, and conveys it to the Temple of the Sun. It seems to me, that to this myth may be traced the form of the Assyrian Nisrock, with the eagle's head and the fir-cone in his hand, indicative of the myrrh egg of the phoenix ; and it is not improbable that it may have originated the form of the Garuda of Vishnu, who is represented as half-man, half-bird, sometimes with a red comb and beak, his robe red, his face, arms, and pinions green ; the feathers of his wings and tail green and blue ; and he is sometimes represented spread and double-headed like the Prussian eagle. 1 The phcenix may also have had some connection with the old Mexican deity, Quetzalcoatl, whose name we are told signifies green-feathered serpent, and who is often represented as a man with green plumes and tail like a bird, having also some affinity to the humming-bird, perhaps because the brilliancy of the plumage of this little winged gem would recall the fabled glories of the Eastern phcenix. It is certain that among Egyptian sculptures the phcenix is sometimes represented as a winged man, with a tuft of feathers on his head. 1 Moor's Hindu Pantheon. 180 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. "It was probably," says Brinton, "the eagle which was worshipped in tipper California, under the name of Panes. But," he adds, "Father Geronimo Boscana describes it as a species of vulture, and relates that one of them was immolated yearly with solemn ceremony in the temple of each village. Not a drop of blood was spilled, and the body was burned; yet the natives maintained and believed that it was the same individual bird they sacrificed each year ; more than this, that the same bird was slain by each of the villages." l Have we not here also a repetition of the phoenix legend of the East ? It would appear that among Aryan nations the cock was in some sense the successor of the phoenix, the representative of the sun-gods of Greece and Rome, and probably also, later, of Quetzal coatl in Mexico, where we find it frequently represented on the monuments ; but whether these are of early or late date, I must leave others to judge. Quetzalcoatl was undoubtedly an early god, adopted by later races into their mythology, as was Jupiter in Rome ; and it is remarkable, that as the eagle was the messenger of Jupiter, so in Mexico it was the eagle which conveyed to Quetzalcoatl the mode of his father's death. It seems natural that a bird should be chosen as the representative of aerial phenomena ; but when we find it in many far distant countries, associated with the introduction of fire, we are tempted to the belief that in some manner these countries have received an ancient myth from some common source, and that that myth bore reference to the early discovery of fire, per- haps, as suggested in the Chinese legend, from sparks produced by the beak of a bird striking some very dry tree, and this bird may possibly have been one of the brilliantly-coloured wood-peckers, afterwards transformed by fancy into the gorgeous phoenix, and changed, accord- ing to the country to which the myth was borne, into the goose, the cardinal bird, the raven, the eagle, the robin, and various others, all, however varied in form, yet bearing 1 Brinton's Myths of the New World. BIRDS IN THE MYTHOLOGIES OF VAKIOUS RACES. 181 about them some traces of the original phcenix in their relation to the sun, or sun-god with his lightning and dark thunderbolts, and always so accompanied by other myths and traces of a peculiar civilization of Turanian character, as to render it almost a certainty that at some remote period there must have been some admix- ture of the aborigines with Asiatic peoples of Turanian origin. CHAPTER XII. TRACES OF PRE-HISTORIC INTERCOURSE BETWEEN EAST AND WEST. 1 Legends corroborated by Monumental Evidence Dr. Daniel Wilson's Routes of Migration The Testimony of Canoes and other Boats Implements and Utensils Rock Sculptures of Peru The Pottery of Peru and Hissarlik The Symbol of the Protruding Tongue The Winged Globe of Egypt in Yucatan and Palenque The T and Swastika The Mexican Pyramids, Dolmens and Rocking-stones Cyclopean Archi- tecture Earth-mounds and Burial Customs Monuments in Pacific Islands Mr. Dall on Distribution of Masks and Labrets Shell Ornaments. HAVING pointed out in previous chapters the probability, from a similarity of legends and religious beliefs or superstitions, that an intercourse must have subsisted in very early pre-historic times between the eastern and western hemispheres, I will here endeavour to show from other sources, that such an intercourse is suggested not only by tradition, but by monumental evidence. Dr. Daniel Wilson, in treating of this subject, points out three probable routes of migration from the eastern to the western hemisphere 1, through the Isles of the Pacific to South America ; 2, an Atlantic Oceanic migration, via the Canaries, Madeira, and Azores, to the Antilles and Central America, and probably by the Cape Verdes to Brazil ;. and 3, via Behring's Strait and the North Pacific Islands to the Mexican Plateau. But he adds " The more obvious traces rather indicate the same current which set from Southern Asia to the Pacific shores of South America, moving onward till it 1 Journal of Anthropological Institute, February 1885. TRACES OF PRE-HISTORIC INTERCOURSE. 183 overflowed by Behring's Strait and the Aleutian Isles, into the continent from whence it was originally derived." l It is obvious that as all these migrations necessitate a sea voyage of considerable length, they could only have been undertaken by peoples having some know- ledge of the art of navigation ; it is therefore desirable, in the first place, to ascertain how far the native vessels of the American continent support the theory of Professor Wilson. Taking the very interesting and instructive paper of General Pitt-Rivers on Early Modes of Navigation 2 as our guide, we find on the American continent, first, the dug-out canoe, the earliest and simplest of all boats, the distribution of which is almost universal, and which probably played an important part in the very earliest migrations of the human race, enabling them to cross rivers and narrow seas ; but we find that the Waraus of Guiana, and the Ahts of North America, fashion their canoes after the Burmese model, whilst the Fuegians, otherwise so low in the scale of civilization, sew planks together with thongs of raw hide, after the fashion of those in use in Africa and the Polynesian Islands. In California we see the papyrus float of Egypt ; but the outrigger, so much used in the Pacific, does not appear to have found its way to America, although the Buccina, or shell trumpet, used on board the canoes of the Pacific, and known also in ancient Rome, is used in Peru. 3 Rafts, like the Madras catamaran, were in use in Peru at the time of the conquest, and carried sails ; one of these vessels having been met far out at sea, conveying both men and women, with provisions and articles of commerce, to the great astonishment of the 1 Pre-historic Man, D. Wilson, p. 384. 2 See Early Modes of Navigation, Colonel Lane Fox (General Pitt-Rivers) (Journ. Anthrop. Inst., April 1875). 3 Mr. Walhouse says the chank shell bored is very generally used as a trumpet not only in India, but also in China and Japan to announce religious observances, and in India it is a distin- guishing attribute of the god Vishnu, who holds it in one of his hands. 184 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. Spaniards, who had never before seen sails used on the American continent. From this slight sketch it will be seen that the art of navigation had made some advance on the American continent before the Spanish conquest, and that the forms of the vessels used can be traced to various parts of the world, although the absence of the outrigger, and the general absence of sails, would seem to show that whatever connection there might have been with Asia and the Polynesian Islands must have ceased before the invention of those two important improvements in primitive navigation. . Turning from navigation to the implements and utensils in use among the American nations before the conquest, we are again met by the fact that their congeners may be traced to many parts of the world. It would be impossible to point out all these, but I may note one or two weapons which, from their peculiar shape, have struck me as particularly useful by way of comparison. And first, an axe-head, probably of metal, which seems to have been regarded as sacred. This axe, called champi, with a handle more than a cubit in length, was given to princes on the occasion of their initiation into mnnhood, as a mark of honour. It is described in the Royal Commentaries thus " The metal part had a blade on one side, and a sharp point on the other." This probably represents the wedge of gold said to have been carried by Manco Capac, and which sunk into the earth at Cuzco. In the remarkable rock-sculptures in the Yonan Pass, Peru, engraved in Hutchinson's Two Years in Peru, we find a rudely-designed figure bearing this axe with a long handle, and having the head adorned with an axe-blade of a similar shape : this was probably an emblem of authority, for we find this same axe-blade attached to the helmet of the curious and unique figure portrayed on a vase found near Trujillo, Peru, which Bollaert looks upon as representing the god of war, and which certainly has a strong affinity with Hanuman, the monkey-god of India. Bollaert also points out the similarity between the vase bearing this figure and some TRACES OF PRE-HISTORIC INTERCOURSE. 185 of those of Etruria, and further remarks that the flying insect resembles a figure on the Athenian vase of Electra at the tomb of Agamemnon. 1 To this I would add that there is a remarkable resemblance between the orna- ments round the girdle of this figure, and those singular Chinese or Japanese ornaments, called magatamas, and would also call attention to the similarity existing between the Peruvian figure holding the long-handled axe and the sculptured figure of a man holding a similar axe at the entrance of a dolmen in Brittany. There are innumerable axes sculptured on the monu- ments of Brittany, but the axe-head is not of the same shape as the Peruvian, although in many it would appear to be similarly hafted. This axe-head appears again as an ornament on the head of the Mexican god of hell, and it is also worthy of remark that the same squareness of face, and the pointed ornaments surrounding the faces, which appar- ently represent the sun-god in the Yonan Pass sculptures, and which appear so prominently in the figure on the great central gateway of Tiahuanaco, are seen in this Mexican figure. 2 I have not been able to trace this axe-head ornament in Egyptian, Greek, or Etruscan sculptures, although it appears to me that the ornament on the Greek helmets which holds the plume may have been derived from it; in fact, on some of the vases the form seems well defined. Two bronzes in the British Museum, labelled "Parts of Assyrian Helmets," are of precisely the Peruvian form, and it appears also on two horses among the Assyrian sculptures. 3 It is seen also on some of the monuments from Halicarnassus now in the British Museum, and on the Hercules from the same place, and is figured by Wilkinson as forming an ornament on the Persian horses, whilst the axe from which this ornament seems to have been derived appears in India, and in the 1 Antiquities, &c. of South America, Wm. Bollaert, F.R.G.S., p. 203. 2 See Smithsonian Contributions, 1879-80. The horses bearing this ornament are said to be foreign. 186 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. Hamath hieroglyphics. There is perhaps an approxi- mation to the form in Egypt, and the Esquimaux have a copper implement of the same form. Another axe, figured frequently in the Mexican paintings, bears a strong affinity to those still in use on the West Coast of Africa. A still more curious weapon called the makquakuitl, very frequent in the Mexican paintings, and which consists of several blades of obsidian inserted in a wooden handle, appears to be represented among the sculptures of Southern Peru ; it somewhat resembles the Egyptian hieroglyph known as the emblem of stability, and its nearest affinities seem to be a wooden club in use in New Guinea, and the shark's-tooth sword or spear of the Philippines. The strong resemblance between the pottery of Peru and that discovered by Dr. Schliemann at Hissarlik, cannot fail to strike every one, and has been very frequently remarked upon by antiquaries; but it is singular to find the figure which occurs so frequently on the Hissarlik vases appearing reversed, on vessels apparently sacred, in the Mexican paintings ; whilst the Mexican form of the same symbol is found amon^ the rock sculptures of Scotland, in conjunction with the "f" seen frequently in the hieroglyphs of Palenque. Nor is this the sole example of similarity between the symbolic sculpturings of America and Scotland. To say nothing of crosses and circles with and without centres, which are plentiful in almost every part of the world in which rock-sculptures are found, we may point out that the figure designated a boar, which is seen on the Scotch monuments, resembles much more nearly the American tapir, than the figure usually called an elephant resembles that animal. In both cases the design would appear to have been drawn from memory or description, and is therefore far inferior to the horse and the bull figured on the same monuments, both which animals must have been familiar to the workmen. There is a figure occurring frequently among the Scottish and British sculptured stones which has been TRACES OF FEE-HISTORIC INTERCOURSE. 187 designated the incomplete circle ; it consists of a series of concentric rings with a dot in the centre, from which proceeds a line leading through and beyond the circles in various directions. This form is figured in Mr. Markham's translation of the Royal Commentaries, where it is thus described "The army reached the town of Tumpampa, where the Inca ordered water to be brought from a river by boring through a mountain, and making the channel enter the city by curves in this way." Cup-markings, so common in Europe, are also to be found in Peru ; but two still more remarkable similitudes must not be omitted before quitting this part of our subject. Among the most hideous of American sculptures are the gigantic figures of Pensacola, represented with protruding tongue, and this symbol of the protruding tongue, generally accompanied by immense fangs, seems to range in ancient American sculptures from Mexico and Central America to Peru. Dr. Wilson gives a modern example of this symbol, the work of the Ta- watin Indians, and it may be seen in a curious figure from a Peruvian vase. In Mexico this protruding tongue was a symbol of Quetzalcoatl. The same symbol appears on some of the early coins of Europe, 1 and is one of the characteristics of the god Bes in Egypt, and of the Gorgon of Etruria. Another still more curious resemblance between the sculpturings of the East and West is found in the winged globe so well known in Egyptian, Assyrian, and Persian sculptures. The Ameri- can example of this mythological emblem is drawn in Stephens's Central America and Yucatan, having been found by him among the ruins of Ocosingo. These ruins are pyramidal structures, over the door of one of which appears this ornament in stucco. Stephens describes it thus " The wings are reversed, there is a fragment of a circular ornament, which may have been intended for a globe, but there are no remains of serpents entwining it." On comparing the figure of this ornament from Stephens's book with the Egyptian 1 As, for example, at Populonia and Parium in Mysia. 188 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. form, I believe no one will doubt that, notwithstanding the reversed position, the two are substantially the same. Nor do I think this is the only example of this very suggestive form, for in the elaborate paper by Mr. Holden in the Smithsonian Contributions, on " Studies in Central American Picture-writing," a view is given of the exterior of the Adoratorio at Palenque, and there, over the door, is a fragment of a stucco ornament strongly suggestive of a similar device. The reversal of the figure is worthy of remark, because it is found not only in America, for Mr. Park Harrison has observed the same in the Phoenician alphabet discovered in Sumatra. I have already pointed out this peculiarity with regard to the ornament on the Mexican vases as com- pared with those of Hissarlik, and believe the same may be applied to some of the hieroglyphic figures on the rocks of the Yonan Pass, Peru, already noticed ; these hieroglyphs strongly resemble letters, but accord- ing to the Phoenician alphabet, appear to be upside down. This, however, does not apply to one figure, which seems to be an ordinary Chinese letter. The most probable reason for this observed reversal of letters and figures appears to me to be that they have been engraved either from memory, or by workmen ignorant of their signification, who, receiving their pattern, applied it according to their own ideas, or by transfer. Many more examples of the identity of the symbols employed in America and the eastern hemisphere might be adduced, as, for example, a curious form which might have been the origin of the arms of the Isle of Man, and which appears prominently in the rock-carvings of both hemispheres. Then there is the cross, both in its simple form and the more elaborated Maltese and Swastika patterns ; the "|" also appears very frequently ; but these have already been learnedly discussed by various enthnologists and antiquaries, and my object is rather to bring forward less known forms and facts. I also omit all reference to the serpent, in its apparently identical significance in the Old World and the New, TRACES OF PRE-HISTORIC INTERCOURSE. 189 which subject I have already treated at some length in a previous chapter. But there is one figure which occurs very frequently among the Mexican paintings, of a bird with a female head, which so strongly resembles the harpy or siren of Greece and Rome that it must not be passed over in silence. Again, the extended hand, so prominent in the sculptures of Central America, and so common both in the rude rock-sculpturings and paint- ings of savages all over the world, appears in several forms identical with those of Mexico and Central America, in the Hamath hieroglyphics (which hieroglyphs seem to me to bear the strongest resemblance of any to those of Mexico and Palenque), and has in both hemispheres a symbolism, perhaps not wholly understood as yet, but which the researches of Mr. Garrick Mallery into the Sign Language of the North American Indians may help to unravel. If we turn from forms and symbols to the great pre- historic monuments of the two hemispheres, we shall find a still more striking resemblance. The likeness between the Pyramids of Mexico and those of Egypt and Assyria has frequently been pointed out, as also that between the great Serpent Mound of Ohio and our own Avebury; but that which is less generally recognized is the existence of stone circles and dolmens in Peru, with legends attached to the former entirely corresponding with those in Cornwall, where, as is well known, these stone circles are known as dance maidens, the legend being that they were heathen dancers turned into stone for disobedience to a Christian missionary, the name dance maidens being regarded by believers in the solar myth as a corruption from Dawns maen, significant of solar worship. The similar legend attaching to the Peruvian circles I give in the words of Salcamayhua, as translated by Mr. Markham. After giving a legend resembling that of St. Thomas, in which Tonapa crosses the lake on his outstretched mantle, he adds " They say that the people of that town (Tiyahuanuca) were engaged in drinking and dancing when Tonapa came to preach to them, and 190 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. they did not listen to him. Then, out of pure anger, he denounced them in the language of the land ; and when he departed from that place all the people who were dancing were turned into stones, and they may be seen to this day." I kmow of only one dolmen, described by Hutchinson, 1 but others doubtless exist, and it is not a little singular to find Quetzalcoatl in Mexico credited with the erection of a rocking-stone, like those attributed to the Druids in Cornwall. Bancroft says (vol. iii. page 254) " Some say that Quetzalcoatl built certain subterranean houses called mitlancalco; and further, that he set up and balanced a great stone, so that one could move it with one's little finger, yet a multitude could not displace it." In like manner the second of the Peruvian Incas is credited with having made his soldiers erect cairns or stone heaps called usuns ; " every passer-by must bring a stone and throw it and their coca pellets on the heap as they passed." 2 Of the Cyclopean architecture of the Peruvians and builders of the gigantic ruins of Central America I have not space to write, but must point out their strong analogy with the remains of Egypt, the tombs of Mycenae and Etruria, and also with some of the gigantic mounds of Ireland, especially with regard to the form of the doorways, and the method of forming the roof of overlapping stones. All these things, however, have been pointed out by many writers, the general conclusion arrived at being that these ruins are extremely ancient, and of indigenous origin in their several centres, notwithstanding the casual resemblance to Egyptian, European, and Asiatic art apparent in most of them. 3 1 Two Years in Peru. 2 Markham : Rites and Laws of the Incas, p. 76. 3 Since writing this I have received The Californian Archi- tect and Building News, containing an account of the Mexican Pyramids, in which the author puts forward an idea which, if it should be verified, would go far not only to connect these pyramids with those of Egypt, but also to give an approximate date for their construction. He says " There is, however, this remark- able circumstance in the situation of the pyramids, that the line TKACES OF PRE-HISTORIC INTERCOURSE. 191 But of all the monuments of pre-historic America, the great earth-mounds of Ohio and the Mississippi are perhaps the most remarkable ; gigantic earthworks re- presenting various animal forms, circles, squares, and oblongs, designed apparently to serve some great mytho- logical purpose, and to perpetuate some religious mystery. They have been divided into sepulchral mounds, sacri- ficial mounds, and mounds of observation ; but in any case they seem to have been constructed by a race of sun-worshippers, and to bear a decided analogy with the erections of the early sun and serpent-worshippers of the Old World. That the mound-builders came originally from a more southern latitude seems proved by the sculptures of animals not found in North America, and I would call especial attention to three mounds figured in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute, . as seeming to bear particularly upon the religious systems both of Peru and Asia. In these three mounds we find an oblong figure between a greater and a lesser circle, representing, as I believe, the mundane egg between the sun and the moon, as hung in Peruvian temples, and in those of Egypt and Assyria. In Peru the mun- dane egg appears to have been signified by the plate of fine gold described by Salcamayhua as signifying " that there was a Creator of heaven and earth." a It is, however, when we come to burial customs that we are struck by the great variety in use on the American continent, and their identity with those in other parts of the world, extending even to those small details which would not seem likely to have arisen spontaneously in the minds of people wholly separated. The use of burial masks, which prevailed so largely joining the centres of both, follows within two degrees a true north and south line. The little discrepancy may be accounted for by the supposition that they were aligned by some star near the Pole at the time of their construction, probably Alpha Draconis, but not Polaris, as, erroneously, Almaraz says." 1 Hutchinson describes a tomb in Peru constructed in the form of an egg cut through the centre. This is evidently connected with the myth of the mundane egg, and has its analogies in our own laud. 192 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. on the American continent, as well as in Egypt, Greece, and Etruria, may be noticed as one of these peculiarities ; another is the cording of the body, so as to keep it in that doubled-up position so universally adopted in very ancient times, and which is not only seen in Peruvian mummies, but is figured in Mexican paintings, and is still practised in Australia and in the Aleutian Islands, as well as among some tribes of North American Indians. Then there is tree-burial, also used in Australia, North Asia, and North America. But all these different modes of burial, and their several affinities, have been so elaborately and learnedly treated by Dr. H. C. Yarrow, in the volumes of the Smithsonian Institution, that I must refer my readers to those most instructive papers for details, and only notice two or three peculiarities which have especially struck me. And first I would call attention to a remark of Consul Hutchinson, in his Two Years in Peru, in which he notices the occurrence of a square opening at the base of some of the tombs. He says " Amongst the ruins (of Parara) is one burial- place, 24 feet long and 18 feet wide, divided into three compartments cross-wise, with walls of 18 inches thick intervening. At the corner of each of these dividing walls, down at the base, there is a small aperture of about 8 inches square, the object of which it is impos- sible to guess at, unless it were intended to allow the spirits of the dead to hold communion with one another." l This opening, though usually of a round form, is found not only in America but also in India; and very fre- quently in dolmens in Great Britain, France, and I think in other parts of Europe; whilst the square form is found in Cyprus and Sardinia. It is connected, as I believe, with another singular custom also found to prevail in Peru, that is trepanning, several instances of which are recorded as having been found in graves in Peru, but the following extract would seem to extend the practice to the mounds of Illinois " One of the skulls presented a circular opening about the size of a silver dime. This perforation had been made during 1 Two Years in Peru, vol. ii. p. 49. TEACES OF PRE-HISTORIC INTERCOURSE. 193 life, for the edges had commenced to cicatrize." l There would also appear to be recorded one case of that in- complete trepanning noticed by Broca, in a skull found in Winnebago county, Wisconsin, which is thus described " On its summit, an inch from the coronal suture, and | inch to the left of the sagittal suture, is a remarkable circular depression, an inch in diameter. It shows no signs of fracture or violence, and the inside of the skull shows no corresponding elevation. What could have occasioned this thinning of the bone we cannot tell ; we only know that it must have been done long before the death of its owner, for the wound, or whatever it is, is perfectly healed, and the bone in the depression is as smooth and of the same sort as the remainder of the skull." 2 This appears to correspond with that which was shown to me by the late Dr. Broca as an example of incomplete trepanning, which he looked upon in the light of a survival from the older form, in which the perforation was complete ; the reason for the perforation in the skull, and the holes in the graves, being the same, that is to allow free exit to the spirit. 3 The extension of this singular practice, found in skulls of neolithic age in Europe, to America, I consider to be a very important ethnological fact ; and it is not a little noteworthy that, in one case at least, in Peru, the perforation is square, corresponding with the holes in the graves. In fact, the squareness of form which seems to prevail in America is a subject for inquiry, for it would appear to have a religious meaning, and would probably give a clue to the god to whom certain buildings were dedicated. In Europe, I believe, the square was sacred to gods of Hell, or the Under- World, but the same idea is not equally well defined in America, where the squareness appears to be extended to the sun-god, but the Peruvian figure may perhaps denote the moon. 1 Mortuary Customs, Smithsonian Contributions, 1879-80, p. 118. 2 Report of Bureau of Ethnology, Smithsonian Institute, 1879, p. 337. 3 For further particulars relating to this most interesting subject I must refer my readers to the following chapter. 194 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. Another curious fact revealed in the graves, especially of Peru, is the practice of distortion of the Lead in infancy. There is a legend relating to this given by Salcamayhua, to the effect that it was ordained by one of the Incas " This Inca ordered the heads of infants to be pressed, that they might grow up foolish and without energy ; for he thought that Indians with large round heads, being audacious in any enterprise, might also be disobedient." l This practice, however, was very common in pre-historic times among various European and Asiatic races, and may be traced in some of the South Sea Islands. One of the Hamath hieroglyphics might represent an ancient Peruvian or modern Aymara. The painting of the face for mourning, which prevails still among modern American races, is also probably a survival from ancient times, and it is worthy of note that the covering of the face, particularly of women, with white clay, prevails not only in the Andaman Islands and Australia, but also among one tribe in Cali- fornia, where the paint used is formed from the ashes of the deceased husband, but generally the mourning colour in America is black. Another and very revolting burial custom of North America, that of scraping the flesh from the bones and placing it in a basket at the foot of the skeleton, which formerly prevailed among tribes of Virginia, the Carolinas and Florida, 2 may fairly be compared with the common Chinese ivory carving of a skeleton carrying his flesh sewed up in a basket ; and another American custom, that of burning articles be- longing to the deceased, in order that they may ascend to heaven in the smoke, 3 is strictly analogous to the Chinese practice. 4 These analogies between the customs ancient and modern of the eastern and western hemispheres might be indefinitely extended, for they meet the inquirer everywhere ; but sufficient has been said to show that 1 Markham's translation of Fables and Rites of the Incas. p. 76. 1 The Yo-kai. See Yarrow's Mortuary Customs, Smithsonian Contributions, p. 194. 3 Ibid. p. 131. * Ibid. p. 100. TRACES OF PRE-HISTORIC INTERCOURSE. 195 practices so identical and so widely extended must have had a common origin, for it appears to me impossible to imagine that all these things could have originated spontaneously in so many different centres. American anthropologists write generally in favour of the indi- genous origin of American civilization, and the monu- ments are indeed sufficiently distinctive ; but I would argue from the vast accumulation of facts, that either the ancient pre-historic civilized peoples of America must have conveyed their ideas and customs to the Old World in some mysterious manner, or they must have received the germs of these ideas and customs from the eastern hemisphere. The route of such possible pre- historic intercourse is generally assumed to have been from China, or perhaps India, by way of the Pacific Islands, and the great monuments before referred to as existing in many of these islands, 1 evidently the remains of a race prior to the present inhabitants, certainly favour this theory; but there are difficulties in the way which must not be overlooked. And first the absence from these islands of all remains of pottery and metal work, in both which arts the Peruvians and Mexicans (if not the Central Americans and the mound-builders) were expert, militates strongly against this opinion ; but I do not think the environs of the great megalithic structures on these islands have been sufficiently explored to render 1 On Ku?ai, or Strong Island, are found massive ruins, appar- ently fortifications, the stones being 8 and 10 feet long, some double that size, the stone unlike any found on the island, and neatly squared on six sides. On Ascension Island Ponape similar ruins are found, but larger. On the shore of one creek is a wall 300 feet long and 35 feet high, built of huge basaltic blocks, with gateway supported on enormous basaltic columns; a large square courtyard, enclosed by walls 30 feet high, with a raised terrace all round, and has evidently been divided into three parts, each containing a closed chamber 14 feet square. The outer walls are 21 feet thick at base, and 8 feet at the top, some of the stones being 25 feet X 8 feet. On Easter Island, besides the great images and crowns, are platforms 200 to 300 feet long, built of hewn stones, fitted without cement ; and Captain Vine Hall found similar remains on Oparo or Rapaiti. See article, " Some Mysteries of the Pacific," in Cassell'a Family Magazine, August 1890. 196 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. it certain that such articles are wholly absent, although unknown to the present inhabitants. It is, however, possible that some of the many customs and beliefs common to America and Asia may have been conveyed by the Pacific route, whilst the arts of metallurgy and pottery may have travelled across the Atlantic, giving rise to those numerous coincidences which are found to exist between the religious myths and rites of sepulture in pre-historic Europe, Africa, and America; nevertheless, it must not be forgotten that it is in Peru, on the Pacific coast, that the pottery, as well as the religion and archi- tecture, bears the stronger resemblance to that of the older pre-historic empires of Egypt, Western Asia, Asia Minor, and Etruria, whilst in many other respects the affinity is great with China. Into this great and intri- cate problem I cannot now enter, but I believe that further investigations will eventually prove that in long bygone ages, as at the present day, there was a constant surging to and fro of peoples, sometimes by accidental migration, sometimes driven onward by enemies of a ruder race, yet always carrying with them from land to land fresh germs of thought, to be planted in new soil, to bring forth plants differing from those from which they originally sprang, although still bearing a family likeness to the parent stem. I have not here touched upon those points of resem- blance so ably discussed by Dr. Tylor, Sir John Lubbock, Dr. Wilson, and others, my object being solely to bring forward those minor details which have not excited so much attention, but which yet seem to me to add much to the weight of evidence proving a pre-historic connec- tion between the two hemispheres. Of two or three of these I purpose treating in subsequent chapters, but would here add a few remarks by Mr. William Dall in his most interesting and instructive article upon " Masks, Labrets, and certain Aboriginal Customs, with an inquiry into the bearing of their Geographical Distribution," contributed to the Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Smithsonian Institution, Washington). "There can be no doubt," says Mr. Dall, "that TRACES OF PRE-HISTORIC INTERCOURSE. 197 America was populated in some way by people of an extremely low grade of culture at a period even geologically remote. There is no reason for supposing, however, that immigration ceased with these original people. Analogy would suggest that from time to time accessions were received from other regions, of people who had risen somewhat in the scale elsewhere, while the inchoate American population had been doing the same thing on their own ground. Be this as it may, we find certain remarkable customs or characteristics geographically spread north and south, along the western slope of the Continent, in a natural line of migration, with overflows eastward in convenient localities. These are not primitive customs, but things which appertain to a point considerably above the lowest scale of develop- ment in culture." Mr. Dall then goes on to speak of customs and myths, adding "If these were of natural American growth, stages in development out of a uniform state of culture, it might fairly be expected that we should find them either sporadically distributed without order or relation, as between family and family, wherever a certain stage of culture had been reached, or distributed in certain families, wherever their branches were to be found. This we do not find. "The only alternative which occurs to me is that these features have been impressed upon the American aboriginal world from without. If so, from whence ? " Dismissing Northern Asia and Europe as giving no help in the matter, Mr. Dall turns to Polynesia and Melanesia, pointing out that from the last of the chain of islands stretching across the Pacific, it is but a step compar- atively, swept by the northerly current, to the Peruvian coast. "We observe also that these islands lie south from the westerly south-equatorial current, in the slack water between it and an easterly current, and in a region of winds blowing towards the east." He then goes on to say, "The instances, &c. I have called attention to, are particularly the use of masks and carvings to a more than ordinary degree, labretifery, human head preserving, identity of myths . . . 198 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. " In Melanesia we find carved figures of a peculiar sort used in religious rites, or with a religious signifi- cance, and strangely enough, two or more figures in a peculiar and unaccustomed attitude, especially devoted to these purposes. 1 Again, in Central America and Mexico we meet the same attitude, and again on the rattle in the hand of the shaman on the north-west coast, and in the carvings on his head-dress, and by his door." He then goes on to point out a variety of customs and myths in the South Seas, similar to those in America, and, whilst deprecating any idea of a common origin, says " But from my point of view, these influences have been impressed upon people already developed to a certain, not very low degree of culture. " Of course this influence has not been exerted with- out contact. My own hypothesis is that it was an incursion from Melanesia, via south-eastern Polynesia, which produced the impact, perhaps more than one. In all probability too, it occurred before either Melane- sian, Polynesian, or American had acquired his present state of culture, or his present geographical distribution." " The impulse communicated at one point might be ages in spreading, when it would probably be generally diffused in all directions; or more rapidly, when it would probably follow the lines of least resistance and most rapid intercommunication. " The mathematical probability of such an inter- woven chain of custom and belief being sporadic and fortuitous, is so nearly infinitesimal as to lay the burden of proof upon the upholders of the latter proposition . . . " It has to me the appearance of an impulse com- municated by the gradual incursion of a vigorous, masterful people upon a region already partly peopled 1 The figures here referred to consist of a man holding a frog or lizard, the tongue of the reptile being attached to that of the man, as though the latter was receiving inspiration, or some special endowment from his totem ; and in addition to the places named by Mr. Ball, in which this peculiar figure is found, New Zealand may be cited, as it frequently appears in the elaborate wood- carvings of the Maories. TRACES OF PRE-HISTORIC INTERCOURSE. 199 by weaker and receptive races, whose branches, away from the scene of progressive disturbance, remained unaffected by the characteristics resulting from the impact of the invader upon their relatives." The contact suggested to Mr. Dall by the wood- carvings described, is further emphasized by the simi- larity of the tools and ornaments in shell, both ancient and modern, found in the South Sea Islands and America. In America, as in the South Seas, shell has been used from the earliest times, not Only to make beads and ornaments, but also to supplement stone in the manufacture of implements, one especial shell being so much prized for this purpose as to have been carried for hundreds of miles inland, evidently forming a great article of commerce. Gorgets most elaborately carved have been found in some of the American mounds, and the design on some of these is almost identical with that painted on the great drums in use in Japanese temples, whilst the beads known as wampum, which formed both the money and historical records of the American Indians, are still made and used for similar purposes in many of the island groups of the Pacific. CHAPTER XIII. SURGERY AND SUPERSTITION IN NEOLITHIC TIMES. 1 Trephined Skulls in Peru and Illinois Discovery of M. Pru- nieres' Supposed Drinking-cup Dr. Broca's Explanation His Theories Surgical Operation for Epilepsy Posthumous Trephining to provide Amulets Operation chiefly on Children Performed by "grating away the Substance with Flint Implement Process described by Taxil (1603) In- complete Trephining Object, to facilitate Escape of Evil Spirit Amulets from Trephined Skulls Rondelles found in Trephined Skulls All French Trephined Skulls belong to Neolithic Times None known in Britain Extension to Mediaeval Times Still in use in Algeria and Polynesia Algerian Mode resembles that of AncienT Peru Belief in Efficacy of Operation Victor Horseley's Theory Dr. Robert Fletcher on Pre-historic Trephining. I REFERRED in the previous chapter to the discovery of trepanned or trephined skulls in Peru, and also in Illinois, as well as of one in which the operation ap- pears to have been incomplete, and I cited the late Dr. Broca as an authority on this most singular and interesting pre-historic surgical operation. It is indeed to Dr. Broca that we are indebted for a theory which appears to give a reasonable explanation of the origin of a custom so apparently barbarous, and the geographical distribution of which is of great ethnological and anthropological importance. It would appear that in 1868 M. Prunieres discovered in a fine dolmen which he explored near Aiguieres, a human skull, from which a large portion had been removed, apparently by means of a flint saw. This hole M. Pnmieres looked upon as having been made in 1 Journal of Anthropological Institute, May 1888. SUPERSTITION IN NEOLITHIC TIMES. 201 order to transform the skull into a drinking-cup, accord- ing to a practice well known to have existed among semi- barbarous races ; whilst a polished portion of the hole he regarded as that part to which the lips had been applied in drinking. Five other fragments of skulls, partially polished, were found in the same dolmen, and these were sup- posed to be fragments of other skulls prepared in like manner to serve as drinking- vessels. But in examining more nearly his collection of skulls from the caves or dolmens of La Lozere, which he had explored, and all of which were assigned to neolithic times, he found several mutilated in the same manner, although not all to the same extent, and he became convinced that the portions removed had been cut away to serve as amulets, several of which he afterwards found; some carefully rounded, polished, and bored for suspension, and others remaining rough and shapeless as when cut from the skull ; whilst, singular to relate, some of these pieces were found inside the mutilated skulls, although evi- dently cut from other skulls. Dr. Broca having been called upon to examine both the skulls and the amulets cut from them, discovered that the polished portion of the hole, which M. Prunieres had at first supposed to have been the part to which the lips were applied in drinking, represented in reality an ancient cicatrized wound, healed many years before death, whilst, for some mysterious reason, most of the amulets bore traces of a portion of a similar cicatrix in some part of their circumference. Pondering upon the frequent recurrence of these curious facts, he came to the conclusion that it was the cicatrized wound which made both the skull and the amulets fashioned from it valuable, and set himself to discover the reason for this apparent veneration. His first conclusions were (1) That during the neolithic period a surgical operation was practised, which consisted of making an opening in the skull for the treat- ment of certain internal maladies, and that this operation was performed almost, if not 202 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. quite, exclusively upon children. This he designates trepanation chirurgicale. (2) That the skulls of those individuals who survived this operation, were regarded as possessed of particular properties of a mystical order, and when such individuals died, rounds or frag- ments were often cut from the skull, to serve as amulets, and that these were cut by pre- ference from the part adjoining the cicatrized opening. The latter operation he designates trepanation posihume. I need not here give the arguments whereby Dr. Broca proves the correctness of his own theory, and refutes those who would assign these singular holes in the human skull to accident or disease, to a blow from a flint axe, or to the natural decay of the bone after death. On all these points Dr. Broca brings his great surgical and anatomical skill to the aid of his antiquarian researches, and proves conclusively that neither of the causes named could account for the appearances observed. Happily the posthumous mutilation was not carried out in all the trephined skulls, and consequently Dr. Broca has been able to show from the shape and condition of the cavity the manner in which it was formed. He believes that it was not made, as in the present day, by an instrument which would cleanly cut away the desired part at once ; but that the perforation was laboriously made by scraping or grating away the substance of the skull, until the end was attained. This he ascertained, by experiment upon skulls in his possession, could be effected on the skull of a child in less than five minutes, whilst on an adult skull it would take anTliour this alone he considered sufficient to prove that the neolithic trephiners operated solely upon children, although, as he justly remarks, " even the longer period of torture is not beyond the endurance either of operator or patient in Oceania at the present day, for there can be no doubt that the power of endurance and of recuperation is far greater among savages than among civilized races." But the proof that this painful operation was per- SUPERSTITION IN NEOLITHIC TIMES. 203 formed during infancy or early childhood does not rest upon probability only, for Dr. Broca found among these perforated skulls one which from its peculiarity of growth (the coronal suture having been deflected by the wound) showed conclusively that the wound had been made and healed at an early period. One circumstance, however, seems rather difficult of explanation; it is that among all the trephined skulls hitherto discovered, there has not been one of a child found. Now, as it is certain that some, and probably a large proportion of those who underwent the operation, died from its effect, we should naturally expect to find at least a few children's skulls thus treated. Dr. Broca explained this by show- ing how much more readily the bones of infants decay, and how much more subject an imperfect and unhealed skull would be to natural disintegration than one per- fectly sound, pointing out that even in ordinary inter- ments children's skulls are rarely met with. There seems great plausibility in this explanation ; neverthe- less, it would certainly be more conclusively in favour of Dr. Broca's argument to find a child's skull thus treated. 1 Another curious point recorded by Dr. Broca is that, although these perforations are found in various parts of the skull, and the posthumous mutilations are often of great extent, the forehead is always carefully exempted in both cases ; this he adduced as one proof among many that these holes were not wounds received in battle ; and also as showing a desire not to interfere with the personal appearance either during life or after death, lest the deceased should not be recognized in the world of spirits. Presuming that Dr. Broca has proved the existence, during neolithic times, of a practice of trephining con- sisting of scraping or grating away the substance of the skull with a Hint or obsidian scraper, leaving a hole of considerable size; that this operation was generally performed upon young children ; that those who sur- 1 One has since been found in Bohemia, as noticed later, of a girl of twelve. 204 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. vived were looked upon with peculiar veneration, and that after death their skulls were sawn away from the cicatrized hole in order to provide amulets of peculiar value for the living, a portion of the cicatrized hole being carefully left upon the mutilated skull, whilst an amulet, cut from another skull, was frequently placed within the cavity made after death the question naturally arises as to the reason of these singular practices. Dr. Broca believes that this dangerous and painful operation was performed for the cure of epilepsy and convulsions, and he argues justly from the superstitious practices found in connection with it, that at that period, as well as long subsequently, these diseases were regarded as peculiarly the work of spirits, and that consequently neolithic peoples had attained to some conception of religion and of a future state. He shows that even as late as the seventeenth century, all con- vulsive diseases were regarded as epilepsy, especially in infancy, although true epilepsy seldom shows itself before the age of ten, and he thinks that this explains why the operation was so constantly practised upon young children, since the apparent cures effected by the process would be more numerous at that age, experi- ence having proved that sufferers at a later age, that is true epileptics, were not cured thereby; whilst those who in early infancy were submitted to the operation, might grow up as living witnesses of its efficacy. Dr. Broca quotes from a treatise upon epilepsy by Jehan Taxil published in 1603, not only to prove that at that date infantine convulsions were confounded with true epilepsy, but also as showing that up to that time epilepsy and kindred diseases were looked upon as spiritual diseases, the work of gods or demons, whilst the remedies recommended in this treatise are highly suggestive, consisting sometimes of the ashes of a human skull applied as a plaster on the crown of the head, sometimes the same administered in potions or pilules, and sometimes as nodules to be worn round the neck, whilst sometimes also scraping the skull was SUPERSTITION IN NEOLITHIC TIMES. 205 recommended. Dr. Broca goes on to show that all through the middle ages, and even after the Renaissance, the substance of the human skull was used in the treatment of epilepsy, the skulls of Egyptian mummies being regarded as the most efficacious; whilst in the last century all the pharmacies contained a bottle labelled " Ossa Wormiana," for the treatment of epilepsy, the peculiar efficacy of the triangular lambdoidian bone consisting in its form, which resembles that of the amulets cut from the human skull; thus showing the step between prophylactic and mystic medicine. Neither was the use of trephining as a remedy for convulsive disorders confined to neolithic times: it is still in favour with Oceanic races, with the Kabyles of Algeria, and also, it is said, with the mountaineers of Montenegro. Even in the last century a certain number of practitioners employed trephining as a cure for epilepsy, and Taxil, before quoted, writing in 1603, gives minute directions for the process, which in epilep- tic cases differed from that employed in cases of fracture of the skull, which is its sole use at the present day, especially when that fracture is likely to produce epileptic convulsions, all modern practitioners regarding it as useless in cases of spontaneous epilepsy. "But." says Dr. Broca, " how came it to be introduced into the practice of medicine ? No one knows. Hippocrates, Galen, and other ancient authors, the Arabs and the Arabists, had not spoken of it ; it was doubtless one of those popular practices which low empirics transmitted from one to another, and which sometimes got intro- duced into therapeutics." M. Prunieres supposed that this practice of trephining was extended to idiots and insane, as well as to convulsive patients, and this Dr. Broca considers possible, although he believes its chief use was for infants suffering from convulsions, who were on that account supposed to be possessed by spirits. Among the skulls examined by Dr. Broca was one which he regarded as particularly noteworthy, because from its appearance it would seem to have been partially trephined ; a large surface had been scraped away, but 206 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. the operation was not completed, or at least it was not continued so as to produce the usual hole. Dr. Broca possessed three specimens of this incom- plete trephining ; one from Roknia, in Algeria, one from Portugal, and another. This incomplete operation he supposed to have been employed either for a minor malady, or more probably that it was adopted . by some unbelieving or less credulous individuals, who attributed the cure rather to the scraping of the substance of the skull, than to the hole made to facilitate the escape of the evil spirit of disease; but at the same time he regarded this incomplete operation as a sign of the decay of an old superstition, pointing out that in the comparatively late treatise of Taxil upon epilepsy, he recommends a treatment which consists of scraping the whole external table of the bone, but which was some- times to be continued so as to expose the dura mater. "Hence," says Broca, "the empiric operators of the middle ages, whose barbarous practices are reflected in Taxil's book, did precisely that which had been done by neolithic operators many centuries before, with this difference, that with the former incomplete trephining was the rule, and complete the exception ; whilst with the latter it was just the reverse, the complete operation being the rule, and the incomplete the exception." I have before mentioned the amulets cut from the trephined skulls, some of which were found inside the skulls thus treated, although these invariably belonged to other skulls, and not to that within which they were found. These amulets are of various forms and sizes. A glance at the mutilated skull figured in Dr. Broca's book will show how they have been cut away from the hole made in trephining, and how much they must have differed in shape. Some of those found are carefully rounded and polished, and have a hole bored in the centre for suspension ; some are triangular, some oblong, and some quite unpolished, just in the state in which they were cut from the skull ; but in almost all there is a portion to be detected of the original cicatrized hole, and it is probably to this that they owed their value. SUPERSTITION IN NEOLITHIC TIMES. 207 Dr. Broca thinks they were probably worn as a charm against those convulsive disorders for which trephining was practised, and that so great was their reputation that they became articles of commerce, so that it was necessary to preserve some visible token of their origin, in order to prove that they were really taken from a trephined skull. This, however, will not explain their presence within the skull from which others had been cut. Dr. Broca supposes that having gone as far as possible in robbing the deceased of his cranial substance, fear of his anger in a future state induced them to make some sort of restitution, by placing within the despoiled skull a valued amulet cut from another sufferer. I cannot say that this hypothesis is quite satisfactory, and I may perhaps be allowed to offer another, which has suggested itself to me as probable. It would appear to me that the permanent hole in the skull, whether of child or adult, would necessitate some sort of shield for the exposed portion of the brain, the least inj ury to which would be fatal ; and what more appropri- ate covering could be found than a portion of the skull of one who had suffered in like manner, and had lived and grown old notwithstanding, and to whose skull therefore a specially preservative power might be assigned by superstition ? One might imagine a mother hastening to provide her suffering child with this preservative shield, either polished or unpolished according to her means, which worn by him in a fillet bound round the head during life, would, as well as other precious posses- sions, be buried with him. But when, perhaps, after a lapse of years the skull of the trephined was again mutilated to provide amulets or coverings for the living, this amulet would be displaced, and of course, being found too small for covering the enlarged cavity, it would naturally be placed inside, perhaps with the vague notion that the departed spirit finding the accus- tomed covering, would not miss the pieces taken from the skull, or would suppose the loss to be the result of accident or natural decay ; for it is not without signifi- cance we read that the skulls wherein the amulets have 208 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. been found, and which are always posthumously muti- lated, are filled up with earth so tightly packed into the cavity as to require some patience to remove it. One point in favour of this hypothesis is, that two out of the three amulets hitherto found in the interior of the mutilated skulls, have been of the rare type styled rondelles by Dr. Broca ; that is, they are nearly round, highly polished, and neatly fashioned at the edge ; the third was also rounded and polished, although of a more irregular shape, had been broken; whilst the ordinary cranial amulets are irregular in form, and generally left in the state in which they were cut from the skull. We must also bear in mind that we are treating of a time when metal was unknown, so that if a shield was required for the exposed brain, some hard substance such as stone, shell, or bone must have been chosen, and this would add to the probability of cranial amulets having been so applied. 1 This, however, would account for very few, three only having hitherto been found within the cavity of trephined skulls, so that by far the larger number were doubtless used and worn as charms, probably to ward off or cure convulsive disorders. Those who have followed this singular account of pre-historic surgery thus far, will naturally inquire whether the custom can be traced to its origin, and whether it was peculiar to one tribe and to one period. To both these questions Dr. Broca has given an answer, although necessarily an incomplete answer. He says that these pre-historic trephinings were in use through the whole of the neolithic age, for they have been found in the cavern of the " Homme Mort " (Lozere), which dates from the commencement of the polished stone period ; also in the sepulchral grottoes of Baye, which date probably from the latter part of that epoch, and again in certain dolmens of Lozere in which a few rare objects in bronze testify to the end of the neolithic age. Traces of the practice have also been 1 In Otaheite they use cocoa-nut shell for this purpose, as recorded later. SUPERSTITION IN NEOLITHIC TIMES. 209 found on skulls partially cremated ; and if it could be clearly demonstrated that cremation was never used in neolithic times, this would prove that the practice of trephining extended into the age of bronze ; but in the sepulchres from which these skulls were taken, no trace of metal was found, and the two modes of inter- ment by inhumation and cremation were found to exist side by side. On the other hand, one of three perforated skulls was discovered by M. Gassier at Entre-roches, near Angouleme, among relics which he assigned to the paleolithic period ; but Dr. Broca shows that from pottery and a polished hatchet having been found in the same sepulchre, as also bones of animals all belonging to existing species, this interment was certainly neolithic, and he does not think trephining can be traced to an earlier epoch than the neolithic. As regards its area and origin, he says the custom obtained in a large part of France, from the artificial grottoes of the department of Marne on the north, to the natural grotto of Sordes (Basses-Pyre'ne'es) on the south; the extreme stations to the south-east being those of Lozere discovered by Prunieres. Similar discoveries have been made by various archaeologists in the department of Charente on the west, in the great dolmen of Bougon (Deux Sevres), and in two sepulchres near Moret (Seine-et- Oise). " Pre-historic trephining, therefore," says Dr. Broca, " was not a local practice confined to a single tribe ; it occupied an extensive area among people who without doubt were numerous and distinct, but who were certainly bound together by strict social and religious ties, and by a common civilization. 1 Whence came this curious practice ? If we judged according to the frequency of the facts, we should be disposed to believe that it originated in the region which now forms the department of Lozere, since it is there that the greater number of specimens have been found. But this result is probably due to the indefatigable 1 These trephined skulls have since been found in many other parts of Europe, as will be seen later. p 210 ANTHEOPOLOGICAL STUDIES. activity and the rare aptitude of M. Prunieres, whose sagacious eye allows no detail to escape. It is not yet three years (1879) since the first discussion in the Anthropological Society of Paris drew the attention of French pre-historians to the subject; it is only since then that other neolithic stations have been studied with this especial object, and the already numerous facts gathered will doubtless soon be multiplied. It is no less probable that similar facts will soon show themselves beyond the geographical area indicated. I am not of the number of those who attribute to one people all the megalithic monuments, and all neolithic civilization ; but it appears to me indisputable that this civilization has been spread most frequently by means of migration, and the determination of the places to which the practice of trephining has been extended may throw much light on the direction of these migrations. " If the incomplete trephinings were as well known and as clearly demonstrated as the perfected ; if, in other words, their witness was as decisive, the skull of Roknia described above would lead us to believe that the thera- peutic surgery of the neolithic epoch had been imported into Northern Africa by the constructors of the dolmens of that region ; perhaps we see there the origin of these trephinings, which have been in use from a very remote period among the Kabyles, and of which M. le Baron Larry has spoken before the Medical Academy of Paris. But a fact at present unique is not sufficient to establish such a conclusion." 1 There can be no doubt that neolithic monuments similar to those in which these trephined skulls have been found in France exist in large numbers in our own country, and more especially in Ireland, Wales, and the West of England ; but as far as I am aware no record exists of the discovery of a skull thus treated in Great Britain or in Ireland; nevertheless I think it probable that such may yet be found ; and indeed, some recently discovered by General Pitt-Rivers at Rushmore 1 8w la Trepanation du Crane, et les Amulettes Craniennes a I'e'poque Neolithique. Par M. Paul Broca, 1879, pp. 69, 70. SUPERSTITION IN NEOLITHIC TIMES. 211 may possibly belong to this category, and if so they would bring down the practice to a much more recent time than that suggested by Dr. Broca. 1 The subject doubtless bears strongly upon the religious beliefs of the people practising it. The hole bored in the skull had its origin in the belief in spiritual pos- session, which existed even within historic times in cases of epilepsy and other convulsive disorders. " The inter- vention of a supernatural agent," says Dr. Broca, 2 " appeared still more evident because certain individuals displayed in their convulsive movements a strength beyond their ordinary strength, nothing but a spirit imprisoned in the body could produce such effects ; he is agitated and angry in his prison ; if a door could be opened for him he would escape, and the sick would be healed. This probably gave birth to the idea of pre-his- toric trephining." This of course presupposes a belief in spirits, beings supernatural and intangible, yet requiring visible means of egress and ingress. It may be regarded as almost certain that the holes found in the stones forming the entrance to dolmens in India as well as in our own country, have their origin in this belief, and the custom which has hardly died out, of passing children through such holes for the cure of certain diseases, appears to bear some analogy to the practice of trephining, although whether the custom of trephining originated in the holed stone, or whether the hole in 1 I find a notice in The Academy (December 2, 1846) of the discovery in an ancient burial-ground at Selby, near York, of a skull with a small round hole in it, " evidently artificial, and re- sembling in every respect a perforation in the skull of a Roman lady discovered in one of the old cemeteries at York ; " and the writer continues, " What was the object of these peculiar efforts of ancient surgery ? It has been suggested that they might be intended to cure epilepsy." I do not know what has become of these skulls, nor whether their age has been ascertained, but if they were specimens of genuine trephining they would be valuable. In any case the discovery is curious and suggestive, as is also the report of the discovery in tombs in the same neighbourhood, of hazel twigs or rods in the hand of four out of seven skeletons found, which bears upon my previous chapter on Divination. 2 Sur la Trdpaiwition du Crane, M. Paul Broca, pp. 69, 70. 212 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. the stone made for the passage of the spirit was taken from the surgical operation, is yet to be ascertained. I fancied I observed a survival of this curious custom of trephining during my sojourn in the South of France. At Cannes I saw several dogs with oblong patches of red leather stuck on their heads, and on inquiring of a man who had one of these dogs the meaning of this curious adornment, he replied, "You see, Madame, all young dogs are subject to fits, and it is supposed that this piece of leather worn just on the brain will prevent these attacks." " And does it really have that effect ? " I asked, desirous of finding out how far the idea extended. " Ah, Madame," was the answer, with the inimitable French shrug of the shoulders, " how can I say ? I am not a keeper of dogs, but they say so." I observed also in Milan that almost every dog wore on the top of the head under the compulsory muzzle, a little ornamental patch of cloth or leather, generally red, but whether with the same idea of warding off madness or fits I could not ascertain. Dr. Broca has told us that even to the present day the shepherds of Lozere trepan giddy sheep, by taking the head of the sheep between their knees, applying the point of their large knife to the skull, and turning it between the hands until a hole is made, and he thinks this might have been done by a flint knife in neolithic times, although this process would not make a similar perforation to that in the trephined skulls; but the people of some of the South Sea Islands, who still practise trephining, perform the operation by scraping with a piece of glass, which substituting flint for the glass Dr. Broca thinks to have been the process in neolithic times, since he found by experiment that he could by that instrument, used as a scraper, make just the elliptic opening found upon the neolithic skulls. " The Kabyles of Algeria," says Dr. Broca, " who often practise trephining, use saws, by the aid of which they circumscribe the piece to be removed." Mr. Squier discovered in an ancient Peruvian tomb a skull which had been trephined by means of four sections, cut at SUPERSTITION IN NEOLITHIC TIMES. 213 right angles, so as to take away a square piece. The Greek surgeons opened the skull by means of a turning instrument, called the trepan, but this, as Dr. Broca points out, could only have been after the discovery of metals, and yet the origin of the operation had been forgotten in the time of Hippocrates, in the fifth century before our era. With regard to cranial amulets, Dr. Broca says that although those of which he has spoken are all of the neolithic period, yet there are traces of their use long after that time. "There is one in the Collection Morel, at Chalons-sur-Marne, suspended from a Gallic torque by a hole in the centre. A similar amulet pierced with holes was found by M. de Baye, also in the Department of Marne, and he possesses several others, which although not suspended to torques, were in all probability made to be hung round the neck like medals, and we may believe that this Gallic custom had descended from neolithic times, although perhaps the Gauls did not attach to them the same ideas as their predecessors ; and that which had originally been an amulet, might in time have become simply an orna- ment, for we know how persistently certain popular customs become perpetuated under their material sign, even when the original design of the custom is lost." l But a singular illustration of the survival of the ancient belief in the efficacy of amulets cut from the human skull as a protection from epilepsy, may be found in the English Illustrated Magazine for May 1886, where, in an article entitled " In Umbria," we meet with the following passage. " A very curious amulet (in Perugia) was the fragment of a human skull enclosed in a little brass reliquary, and considered to be a sovereign protection against epilepsy and kindred disorders. Tradition said that this bit of bone had belonged to the skull of a person dead two hundred years before, who had worked so many wonderful cures by his skill in medicine, and had lived such a long and saintly life, that he had been 1 Les Trepanations Prehistoriques, Broca, p. 6. 214 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. loved and venerated by all. The professor told us that it was not at all uncommon, when a body was dug up in the course of excavations, to find a bit of the skull missing, and this amulet doubtless explained the use that had been made of such lost fragments." It seems a pity that these mutilated skulls have not been scientifically examined, for the superficial account of the professor would seem to suggest evidence of trephining, although the date of the skulls referred to is not defined. Among the relics of the Swiss lake-dwellers, Keller describes a tomb at Auvernier having a large slab of gneiss, in which is an opening more or less square, made with apparent intention, sufficiently large for a human body to be carried through, and among the relics within this tomb " a little bone 1 inches in diameter, carefully polished on both sides, and perforated in the centre." This was probably a cranial amulet, and if so it would be extremely interesting as showing the extension of similar practices and religious beliefs to the lake- dwellers. Many such relics might, I believe, be found among the neolithic tombs of Great Britain and Ireland, and the great light which would thus be thrown, not only upon the habits and customs, but also upon the superstitions, the belief in spirits and in a future state, by these mute records of an age and people long passed away, renders the search for them peculiarly interesting. In addition to this the ethnological value of these things must not be overlooked. It seems barely possible that the Kabyles of Africa, the natives of the South Sea Islands, and the neolithic peoples of France, would have hit upon this peculiar custom of trephining, and have carried it out in the same manner, and fur the same cause, unless the custom acquired in one spot had been conveyed from that one spot to others, either as Dr. Broca says by means of migration, or by some mode of intercommunication at present unknown to us. It will thus be seen that both the custom of trephining and the use of cranial amulets may be traced over a SUPERSTITION IN NEOLITHIC TIMES. 215 very large area, including, as it would appear, the Pacific Islands and Peru, extending also probably to the North American continent, as well as to Africa and various parts of Europe ; and also occupied a very considerable space of time, since we have traced both customs, either in full operation, or in a state of survival, from neolithic times to the seventeenth century, and even to the present day among the Kabyles and inhabitants of Polynesia. Nevertheless, there are some very curious points in connection with these customs, as explained by Dr. Broca, which require to be looked into more closely. In the first place, all the trephined skulls hitherto dis- covered belong, as Dr. Broca believes, to the neolithic period, extending from the beginning to the end of that period, when they suddenly cease ; and yet the belief in the efficacy of the operation in epileptic and convulsive disorders continued even to the seventeenth century, as is witnessed by the quotation from Taxil's treatise on epilepsy, wherein he recommends the treatment of epilepsy to consist of " the application of a cautery or issue, obtained by exposing the bone by grating and taking away the outer portion, as they do generally" Why then do we not find skulls of the Iron age thus treated ? Dr. Broca attributes the sudden cessation of trephining to a change of religion at the commencement of the Bronze age ; he says " The adoption of a new mode of sepulture necessarily implies a great change in religious ideas. But it is quite to be understood that a people is not converted at once, and entirely to new beliefs, and that superstitions would survive during some time. The practice of trephining, therefore, may well in certain places have survived the neolithic period for a short time, without our being justified in attributing it to the Bronze age, and everything leads to the belief that it became extinct at the same time as neolithic civilization." Dr. Broca has, however, himself shown that there has been no such great change in religious belief in regard to trephining, for he has pointed out that in all ages epilepsy and convulsive disorders have been attributed 216 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. to spirits and demons, and that trephining was resorted to as a cure for these disorders as late as the seventeenth century, whilst exorcism to drive out the evil spirit, and that sort of survival which consisted in passing children through a holed stone for the cure of these disorders, may be traced even to the present day. Therefore that the custom of trephining should suddenly cease with neolithic times is strange if proved. The practice of cremation, which became almost universal in the Bronze age, may have destroyed in a great measure the neces- sary proofs, although Dr. Broca relates that among numerous fragments partially cremated, discovered by M. Chouquet, two bore traces of surgical and posthumous trephining, but from the absence of metal he puts this instance of cremation down to neolithic times. My own impression is, that the custom once introduced was con- tinued both by tradition and practice to a late epoch, although perhaps it became less and less frequent, as superstition gradually died out among the better educated, and surgery became confined to an educated class, instead of being the privilege of witch doctors or medicine men, which was doubtless the case in neolithic times, as it still is in uncivilized countries. Another singular circumstance with reference to these pre-historic trephinings is, that some of the skulls have been left entire, whilst others have been largely muti- lated to provide cranial amulets. Dr. Broca thinks that the exemption from mutilation was due to the opposition of the survivors, but I would suggest whether it might not rather be that the unmutilated had not been cured, and that therefore their skulls were not regarded with the same veneration, or perhaps the posthumous muti- lations may have taken place at a later date, in conse- quence of a new superstition, and the unmutilated may have remained undiscovered. The conclusions of Dr. Broca have been challenged by Professor Victor Horsley, who in a paper read before the Anthropological Institute, in 1887, endea- voured to prove that the operation was employed in neolithic times, as in the present day, for the .relief of SUPERSTITION IN NEOLITHIC TIMES. 217 a fractured skull pressing upon the brain, and that the excision was made by sawing or by drilling a number of holes and then running them together by a saw, and so removing the piece of bone, rather than by the scraping process suggested by Broca. It is possible that both Professor Horsley and Broca may be right, but the learned French anthropologist, in his most interesting memoir on the subject, discusses Professor Horsley 's views, and rejects them upon what appears to me suffi- cient grounds : these are the oval shape of the opening and the sloping sides of the cicatrized wound, both of which are consistent with the process of scraping, but not with the use of a circular trephine or a saw ; then he rejects the idea of its use for injuries to the skull, because there is no appearance of fracture in the vicinity of the wound. In the discussion which followed the reading of Pro- fessor Horsley's paper, most of the speakers inclined to the belief that the operation was probably performed for epilepsy or other convulsive disorders, and had a superstitious origin in accordance with Dr. Broca's views ; and Dr. Ryle pointed out that in the works of Hippocrates, about 400 B.C., cases of trephining for in- juries to the head are recorded, whilst Aretaaus the Cappadocean, about the second century of our era, advises the use of the trephine for epilepsy recom- mending scraping the bone down to the diploe for simple pain in the head, a practice suggestive of the incomplete trephining recognized by Broca. The cuts relied upon by Professor Horsley, as disproving Broca's theory of the process of scraping, had also been discussed by Broca, but he showed that these cuts appeared only in cases of posthumous trephining, none being known where cicatrization had taken place. In an exceedingly interesting article on Pre-historic Trephining and Cranial Amulets, by Dr. Robert Fletcher, in the Contributions to North American Ethnology, 1882, the author, after discussing the views of Broca, comes to the conclusion that although the operation was performed by scraping in the case of children, it was 218 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. possibly carried out in adults by a series of punctures, as suggested by Professor Horsley, and he instances the practice still in use in Algeria, giving illustrations of the implements employed ; but at the same time he points out that the discovery of many skulls partially trephined by scraping (at least twenty being known) is strongly corroborative of Broca's views, which are cer- tainly borne out by the process still existing in Otaheite, where " a notion prevails that headache, neuralgia, ver- tigo, and other cerebral affections proceed from a crack in the head, or pressure of the skull on the brain. The remedy is to lay open the scalp with a cross or T i n- cision, then scrape the cranium carefully and gently with a piece of glass, until a hole is made into the skull down to the dura mater, about the size of a crown piece." The portion of bone thus removed is supplied by a piece of cocoa-nut shell, carefully smoothed and inserted under the scalp over the wound, and this oper- ation is so frequent that although nearly half^die from the effects of it, yet very few male adults are without this hole in the cranium. The instrument formerly em- ployed for this operation was a shark's tooth, but since the advent of Europeans glass has been substituted. In Algeria the operation is frequently performed among a tribe of Kabyles, and has a religious signifi- cance, the operator being a priest, " who has inherited the right to perform it ; the operator, the instruments, and the dressings are sacred, and the patient is held in reverence after his recovery. The dressings consist mainly of woman's milk and butter, both of which ingredients figure in ceremonial observances in the East." M. Martin, who was sent by the French Government to inquire into the practice, mentions that he has seen men upon whom trephining had been performed five or six times, so that their heads were monstrously dis- figured. The question has been raised by Dr. Fletcher which had also suggested itself to my mind, whether the priestly tonsure did not originate in the custom of tre- phining the head to expel the evil spirit of disease. SUPERSTITION IN NEOLITHIC TIMES. 219 There would seem to be some reason for the supposition, especially when we remember the size and position of the tonsure in some orders, which certainly resembles the wound in the trephined skulls, and might be referred to a survival of a practice fallen into desuetude, being employed to denote the holiness of one from whom the evil spirit had been expelled. The singular and unex- plained fact that the tonsure exists among the Brahmins would, in such a connection, lead us to suppose that trephining was also practised anciently in India ; a sup- position which receives support from the fact that holed dolmens that is, stone graves with holes bored in one of the stones, as anthropologists believe, in order to facilitate the entrance and exit of the spirit are found in India as well as in Europe and in Peru, and these holes in graves are certainly analogous to the holes made in the skull, in all probability for the same purpose, that is, to allow the escape of the spirit. It is certain that among all barbarous peoples, disease in every form is looked upon as the work of malignant spirits ; it is something outside of and foreign to the sufferer, brought about by some evil spirit in the service of an enemy, therefore the intruder must be expelled by a more powerful spirit, working in and through the witch doctor, who, being called in, proceeds to find out, by the aid of magic, who and what has caused the evil, pretending to suck out from the patient pieces of bone and stone as magically introduced by the evil spirit, who is exorcised with many mystic ceremonies. It would be impossible to discover at what period in man's history a belief in spirits originated, but it was certainly very early. In fact, the fear of the unknown, which is the germ of religion, is shared with us by many of the inferior animals, and it is easy to see that this germ would rapidly develop in man into a superstitious fear of unseen spirits, so that when a sudden illness such as epilepsy or convulsions, for which no natural cause could be assigned, attacked any one, means must be found to get rid of the evil spirit who had brought it about, and the exit must be facilitated by making a 220 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. hole to allow of his escape. It seems natural to suppose that this or some similar train of thought must have been the origin of pre-historic trephining. The mind of uncivilized man is not strictly logical, and therefore there is to him nothing strange in the idea of making a tangible mode of exit for that which is intangible, and even to the present day a remnant of this superstition lingers among us, so that ignorant watchers round a death-bed will throw open the door or window to allow the soul to escape. Among some races the soul, once departed, is for- bidden to return, lest the deceased should appear as a wandering ghost, and with this idea all the natural vents in the body are securely closed, the mouth being tied together with strong cords. Perhaps some idea of this kind caused the packing with earth observed by Dr. Broca in the much-mutilated skulls posthumously trephined, and the placing therein the amulet worn in life to protect the exposed brain. Among other races free exit and entrance were provided for by cutting a hole in the tomb as well as a hole in the skull, but in both cases there is a distinct belief in spirits expressed in different ways. Dr. Fletcher in his article on Pre-historic Trephining, referred to above, gives a list of trephined skulls found since the early discoveries in France ; among these are several from Bohemia, one being of a girl of about twelve, one from Borreby in Denmark, and some in Russia. He also calls attention to the legend of the birth of Athene as related by Lucian, which he looks upon as the first historical record of trephining. The principal and most important facts connected with this singular practice, may be thus summed up : That in pre-historic times, at a date not easily calculable, but which may certainly be reckoned by thousands of years, when men were living in caves, and in a state of society probably nearly resembling that of the South Sea Islanders of to-day, using only flint and bone im- plements, they had yet attained to such surgical skill as enabled them to trephine or cut away a portion of the SUPERSTITION IN NEOLITHIC TIMES. 221 skull, in order, as was supposed, to expel an evil spirit which had caused epileptic convulsions ; that this opera- tion was performed by scraping away the substance of the skull with a flint scraper, and that this operation was per- formed chiefly upon children ; yet so great was the recu- perative power among these savages that they survived the operation many years, being consequently regarded with much veneration, and that after their death pieces of the skull including a portion of the cicatrized wound were cut away, to provide amulets to protect others from similar seizures ; that this practice existed in many countries remote from each other, and extended even to America, and that it is still practised in Algeria and the South Sea Islands, and may be traced in a state of survival in other places ; and that in connection with it may always be found a superstitious belief in spirits requiring a visible means of ingress and egress, denoting a rudimentary belief in a future state. CHAPTER XIV. ON TATTOOING. 1 Tattooing very Ancient and almost Universal In some Places Men and in others Women only Tattooed Two Distinct Modes of Operation I. By Cuts Cicatrized. II. By Pricks with Colouring Matter rubbed in Cicatrization in Australia and Africa Three Cuts on Cheek in West Africa Same Mark on Ancient Bronze Head in Italy Cicatrization in Andaman and Admiralty Islands and Timor Laut Tattooing in New Zealand Among the Nagas of India In Borneo In New Guinea Among the Haidahs and Eskimo Tattoo Marks on Chin of Women Denotes Marriage Tribal Marks On Shell Masks On Easter Island Statues Im- plements of Tattooing Tattooing in Japan. THERE is another painful operation still in very general use among savages and semi-civilized peoples, the geographical distribution of which seems to have an important bearing upon that intercourse between distant countries in pre-historic times, the existence of which I have endeavoured to prove from traditional and monumental evidence. I refer to the practice of tattooing, the origin of which seems lost in the night of ages, although its antiquity cannot, like that of trephining, be proved by existing remains. Falling under the head of ornament, it seems pro- bable that this painful mode of personal adornment was adopted at a very early period of human history, and was at one time almost universal, falling into desuetude with. the advance of civilization when cloth- ing became general, and ornaments were chosen which would not entail pain, and could be varied according 1 Journal of Anthropological Institute, May 1888. ON TATTOOING. 223 to the caprice of the wearer. But even to the present day tattooing forms the dress of the great mass of the unclothed natives in various parts of the world, whilst in some places it is more than a personal adornment, forming a ceremonial rite accompanying initiation into manhood. In some places men only are tattooed, in others women alone are thus adorned ; but there is generally some story or legend given to account for the preference awarded to one sex over the other, as, for example, in Samoa, where Mr. Turner 1 tells us that Taema and Tilafainga, or Tila the sportive, were the goddesses of the tattooers. They swam from Fiji to introduce the craft to Samoa, and on leaving Fiji were commissioned to sing all the way, " Tattoo the women, but not the men." They got muddled over it in the long journey and arrived at Samoa singing, "Tattoo the men, and not the women " ; and hence the universal exercise of the blackening art on the men, rather than the women. There are two principal modes of tattooing. In the one which is probably the oldest, cuts are made in the flesh in such a manner as to leave a cicatrized mark, but generally without the addition of any colouring matter. In the other a pattern is drawn on the skin, which is afterwards pricked in with needles or other sharp-pointed implements, various colouring matters being rubbed into the wounds, so as to produce a permanent picture. The first method prevails in Australia, where many of the natives are scarred in a remarkable manner, some of those exhibited in England a few years ago, having the shoulder cut and scarred, so as to resemble a great tassel, like a footman's shoulder-knot. But although the custom of thus gashing the shoulder, back, and breast seems in some parts of Australia to be almost universal, it does not appear to be connected with the elaborate initiation ceremonies; it may, however, pro- bably have a tribal signification. This mode of tattoo- ing by cuts, leaving raised cicatrices, which Mr. Tomkins 1 Samoa, by George Turner, LL.D., p. 55. 224 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. suggests should be named gashing, prevails with modifi- cations all over the African continent. On the West Coast, three cuts on each cheek would appear to be the chief decoration, and these cuts are coloured red and blue, according to the masks and other representations brought over for the Colonial and Indian Exhibition. 1 It is not a little singular that these three cuts appear on a bronze head of great antiquity from the Necropolis of Marzabotto, Bologna, Italy. This head is engraved in the Smithsonian Report of the Bureau of Ethnology for 1882-83, from which I have taken some of the material for this chapter. I cannot meet with any account of the origin of these three cuts, but believe they may perhaps have some religious as well as tribal significance, for Dr. Holub, speaking of similar cuts on the breast of a Koranna, says "They have among themselves a kind of freemasonry. Some of them have on their chest three cuts. When they were asked what was the reason of it, they generally refused to answer ; but after gaining their confidence they confessed that they belonged to something like a secret society, and they said, ' I can go through all the valleys inhabited by Korannas and Griquas, and wherever I go when I open my coat and show these three cuts I am sure to be well received.'" 2 Mr. Johnston gives a sketch of a Mu-ngala from the equator whose body was entirely 1 Mr. Griffith in his paper on Sierra Leone (Jo-urn. Anthrop. Inst., February 1887, p. 309) says " The girls are cut on their backs and loins in such a manner as to leave raised scars which project above the surface of the skin about one-eighth of an inch. They then receive Boondoo names, and after recovery from the painful operation, are released from Boondoo with great ceremony and gesticulation by some who personate Boondoo devils with hideous masks, &c. The girls are then publicly pronounced marriageable." Mr. Phillips explained after his paper, read at the Anthropological Institute on November 8th, 1887, the mode in which these gashes are made ; he said a needle and a knife are employed, the needle being inserted under the skin, and gashes cut across it with the knife, sand being rubbed into the cuts to produce the raised appearance. 2 " On the Central South African Tribes," Anthrop. Journ., August 1881. ON TATTOOING. 225 covered with cicatrizations, which he says are produced by raising lumps or wheals of skin by slitting it with a knife and rubbing some irritant into the incision, and he tells us that this mode of ornamentation is practised right along the course of the Congo up to the Stanley Falls. The marks thus made are tribal. " Thus," he says, "the Bateke* are always distinguished by five or six striated lines across the cheek-bone, while the Bayansi scar their foreheads with a horizontal or vertical band." ! The Andamanese, who also practise tattooing by means of gashing, do so, according to Mr. Man, first by way of ornament, and secondly to prove the courage of the individual operated upon, and his or her power of enduring pain. Women are the chief operators, and they now use a piece of glass to make the incisions, but formerly a flake of quartz. They commence tattoo- ing children about their eighth year, and the process is not completed till they are sixteen or eighteen ; but they never tattoo the face, neither do they rub any pigment or other preparation into the wounds. Although no particular ceremonies accompany the operation, the marks here, as in Africa, would appear to be tribal, for Mr. Man tells us of three tribes who may be specially distinguished by three rows of cuts down the back and chest, and "although women do the greater part of this work, the three lines down the back are almost exclusively made by some male friend with the ola or pig-arrow ; and except the three lines in front, the women of these tribes have no special marks, but are covered like the females of South Andaman with small raised cuts, which are inflicted by their own sex with the ordinary glass or quartz flake, and not with the pig-arrow." 2 In another tribe the central row of cuts down the back is omitted, and in another the whole body is covered with perpendicular and horizontal cuts. In the Admiralty Islands, Mr. Moseley says that 1 The River Congo (H. H. Johnston), p. 420. 2 Anthrop. Joimi., February 1883, p. 334. Q 226 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. " the males are mostly marked with cicatrizations on the chest and shoulders," in the form of circular spots about the size of half-a-crown, which are often con- tinued down the back in two lines meeting in the middle, and these marks appear to be assumed only at adult age, but "the women are all tattooed, with rings round the eyes and all over the face, and in diagonal lines over the upper part of the front of the body, the lines crossing each other so as to form a series of lozenge-shaped spaces." This tattooing is done with short cuts, probably with obsidian flakes, being coloured indigo blue, but it is scarcely visible at a distance, and does not form coloured patches as in the Fijian women and Sarnoan men. 1 The Solomon Islanders also tattoo in this manner with short cuts. In Timor Laut, Mr. Forbes tells us, "both sexes tattoo a few simple devices, circles, stars, and pointed crosses, on the breast, on the brow, on the cheek, and on the wrists; and scar themselves on the arms and shoulders with red-hot stones in imitation of immense small-pox marks, in order to ward off that disease." But, he adds, " I have, however, seen no one variola- marked, nor can I learn of any epidemic of this disease among them." 2 It may therefore be interesting to compare these marks with those described above as in use in the Admiralty Islands, which they seem to resemble. We turn now to the other species of tattooing, being that most commonly known by that name, in which a pattern is first drawn and afterwards pricked into the flesh, various colours, but chiefly indigo blue, being rubbed into the wounds, thus forming indelible marks. This mode of adornment is found very widely spread, but it reaches its culminating point in New Zealand, where it may be said to attain the position of a fine ait, the tattooing for each part of the face being known 1 H. N. Moseley 'On Admiralty Islands,' Anthrop. Journ., May 1877. 8 Anthrop. Jowrn. August 1883, p. 10. ON TATTOOING. 227 by a separate terra. The blue dye used by the Maories in tattooing is made from the soot obtained by burning the heart of certain trees. 1 The designs consist of curved lines, which frequently cover the entire face, even extending over the eyelids. The process is ex- tremely painful, and can only be done by degrees, so that years are occupied in completing the operation, the instruments employed being of sharp human bone. Tattoo marks were looked upon as signs of dignity and denoted a warrior. 2 The nearest approach to the New Zealand tattooing appears to be that practised among the Nagas of India, of whom Col. Woodthorpe writes, " they would be good- looking as a rule, but for the tattooing which in some cases make the faces almost black ; in others the tattoo- ing is blue, and then the bare portion of the face, especially in those of fair complexion, appears pink by contrast. The tattooing on the face is called ' Ak/ and consists of four continuous lines carried across the forehead, round and underneath the eyes up to the nose, back over the cheeks, and round the corners of the mouth to the chin; rows of spots follow the outside lines, and two fine lines mark out the nose, in a large diamond space." 3 Some of the Naga tribes do not tattoo the face, but only the breast, shoulders, back, wrists, and thighs. The women are also tattooed more or less, but among the Angamis and other Eastern tribes, we find very elaborate designs, consisting of lines on the breast, from which proceed eight lines to the waist, gradually narrowing to a point ; the thighs are covered with close vertical lines, with horizontal lines on the calves. This curious tattoo, which has the 1 Mr. Kerry-Nicholls in Anthrop. Journ., November 1886. 2 It has been said, and probably with truth, that the tattooing of the bodies of chiefs and warriors was for purposes of identifi- cation, in case the head should be cut off by the enemy in battle, and this is particularly noticeable in New Zealand, where we are informed that every mark or line tattooed on the face of a chief is repeated on the body. 3 Colonel R. G. Woodthorpe, R.E., Anthrop. Journ., February 1882, p. 208. 228 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. appearance of tight-fitting breeches, extends to Borneo ; and there is in the British Museum a painting from " Head Hunters of Borneo," representing a Tring priestess thus adorned. Of this curious ornament, Colonel Yule 'writes " The practice of tattooing has been too gener- ally diffused to build anything on its existence. But there is an application of it so peculiar and remarkable, that it is worth while to notice its coincident existence among races both of the continent and of the islands. This consists in covering the skin from the waist to the knee with dark embroidery; in fact tattooing breeches upon the body. In spite of a thousand years at least, perhaps much more, of Indian religion and influence, every male Burman is thus adorned. In Borneo among certain tribes, the women have precisely the same decoration." l In New Guinea the Motu women are very elaborately tattooed in geometrical patterns. Some of the men are also tattooed, but in this case it denotes, as in New Zealand and among the Nagas, that they are warriors, and have slain one or more enemies ; and Mr. Lawes says, " It is no uncommon thing to hear men quarrelling, and one saying to the other, Who are you that you should talk ? Where are your tattoo marks ? Who have you killed, that you should speak to me ? " In New Guinea, the tattooing is done by marking out the pattern in lamp-black and then puncturing the skin by lightly tapping a thorn on it. Tattooing seems formerly to have been in almost general use among the Indians of North America, but is now almost confined to the Haidahs of Queen Charlotte Islands and Alaska; it exists also among the Eskimo, and Greeley reports meeting a boat rilled with Eskimo from the west of Davis Strait, one of whom was tattooed. The tattooing of the Haidahs differs from that of most other races, the patterns consisting chiefly, if not wholly, of animal forms instead of geometrical patterns ; these animal forms are the totems of the tribe, and are repeated on the pillars erected before the door of the chiefs, but they are con- 1 Anthrop. Journ., February 1880, p. 294. ON TATTOOING. 229 ventionalized representations, bearing a strong family resemblance both to the carvings of ancient Mexico and Central America, and to those of New Zealand at the present day ; a likeness which could not fail to strike those who compared them, as exhibited in the Colonial and Indian Exhibition : the chief difference being, that the Haidah totem posts were highly coloured, whilst those of New Zealand were of natural wood, polished. I referred to the peculiarities of these totem posts in a former chapter (XII.), and need not therefore say more on the subject now, excepting to draw attention to these resemblances as bearing upon a peculiarity connected with the art of tattooing. In the very fine portraits of Maories exhibited in the New Zealand Court of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition, the peculiarities of New Zealand tattooing were well depicted, and it might have been observed, that whilst the faces of the chiefs were covered with ornamental designs, the women were tattooed only on the chin, and the faces of young girls were not tattooed at all. 1 The tattooing of the chin and lips of women, we were informed, took place only after marriage, and in fact, like the wedding-ring among ourselves, denoted marriage. Now, this custom is not confined to New Zealand, but has a very wide range, and I quote a few instances from the article already alluded to on "Pictographs of the North American Indians" in the Annual Report of the Bureau of 1 The custom, however, appears to vary, for I am informed that in some parts of New Zealand no importance is attached to tattooing, which is done, as with ourselves, simply as a fancy, some young girls being tattooed round the eyes. From the fact, however, that there is a special name in Maori for the tattooing of every part of the body, it would seem to have been originally ceremonial in origin. The female tattoos are for the breast, the thighs, and the chin, the latter being the principal. (See Te Tka a Maori, by Rev. Richard Taylor, p. 321, &c.) Mr. Taylor believes tattooing to have originated in consequence of the chieftains being of a lighter race and having to fight side by side with their black slaves, so in order to make themselves appear of the same race they blackened their i'aces, and when wars became very frequent they made these marks indelible to save the trouble of constant blackening. 230 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. Ethnology for 1882-83. "Captain John Smith (1819) says of the Virginia Indians ' They adorne themselves with copper beads and paintings. Their women have their legs, hands, breasts, and faces cunningly im- broidered with divers workes, as beasts, serpents, artificially wrought into their flesh with blacke spots.' " The Innuit, according to Cook, tattooed perpendicular lines upon the chin of women, and sometimes similar lines extending backwards from near the outer portions of the eyes. M. Gatschet reports that among the Klamath, the women have three lines, one from each corner of the mouth, and one down over the centre of the chin. The Modoc women tattoo three blue lines extending perpendicularly from the centre and corners of the lower lip to the chin. Stephen Power says, that the Karol California squaws tattoo, in blue, three narrow fern-leaves perpendicularly on the chin, one falling from each corner of the mouth and one in the middle. T^he same author says, " The squaws (Patawat, California) tattoo in blue three narrow pinnate leaves perpendicularly on their chins," and the women of the Wintuns, another Californian tribe, tattoo three narrow lines, one falling from each corner of the mouth and one between. The Report of the Pacific Eailway Expe- dition, vol. iii., says, " Blue marks tattooed upon a Mojave woman's chin denote that she is married." Bancroft says, of the Eskimo, that the females tattoo lines on their chins; the plebeian female of certain bands has one vertical line in the centre, and one parallel to it on either side. The higher classes mark two vertical lines from each corner of the mouth. The Kuskoquim women sew into their chin two parallel blue lines. On the Yukon River among the Kutchins the women tattoo the chin with a black pigment. 1 Nordenskiold ( Voyage of the Vega) says, the Chukche' women are tattooed on the face, especially the chin, the men are not tattooed, but have sometimes a black or red cross painted on the cheek. The true Chukches 1 Native Races, vol. i. pp. 48 and 72. ON TATTOOING. 231 are reported as living on the coast of America, north of Behring's Straits. They insert bones in the lips and in the sides of the mouth, and have articles of nephrite like that from High Asia. Mr. Everard im Thurn speaks of the tribal tattoo mark at the corners of the mouths of the Indians of Guiana, but does not speak of these marks as confined to women : the women of that country, however, repre- sented in the Colonial and Indian Exhibition, had distinctive marks on the lips and round the mouth extending across to the ear, but whether of paint or tattoo markings could not be certainly known. Turning now to the eastern hemisphere, we find among the Ainos of Japan, that the women tattoo their chins, as it is said, to imitate the beards of the men, and among the fellahs of Egypt, and the labour- ing people of the cities, the women tattoo their chin, forehead, breast, hands, and feet. In Upper Egypt most women puncture their lips to give them a dark bluish tinge. 1 Among the Nagas of India we are told, "the women all tattoo slightly; fine lines are drawn on the chin, the outer ones being tattooed from the corners of the mouth." 2 This tattooing of the chin appears also on the Motu woman of New Guinea depicted in the Anthropological Journal for May 1878. Drawing together the threads offered by the fore- going facts, we may, I think, assume, that tattooing by cicatrization exists chiefly among the black races; that the marks are tribal, although in some cases they denote membership of a secret society, a sort of free- masonry, of great service to the possessor ; that tattoo- ing, as it exists in New Zealand and among the Pacific Islands, is chiefly ornamental, and in the men honour- able, denoting bravery in battle ; but the pattern em- ployed has also a distinct reference to some event, as well as being tribal ; whilst in the women, the tattoo 1 See Featherman's Social History of the Races of Mankind, vol. v. p. 545 ; and Scieiice, III. No. 50, p. 69. 2 Anthrop. Journ., February 1882. 232 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. mark on the chin almost always denotes marriage. So general does this custom of tattooing the chin in women seem, that it would appear possible by it to distinguish the sex not only in the living individual, but in paintings and sculptures. The wide distri- bution of this peculiar custom appears to me of con- siderable significance, especially as it follows so nearly in the line I have previously indicated as suggestive of a pre-historic intercourse between the two hemi- spheres. " If," says Max Miiller, " we find the same words with the same meanings in Sanskrit, Persian, Armenian, Greek, Latin, Celtic, Slavonic, and Teutonic, what shall we say ? Either the words must have been borrowed from one language by the other, or they must have belonged to an older language from which all these so-called Aryan languages were derived." This, using customs instead of languages, is what I have endeavoured to show in this volume. When we find in India, Japan, Egypt, New Guinea, New Zealand, Alaska, Greenland, and America, the custom of tattooing carried out in precisely the same manner and for the same ends, and when in addition to this we find a similarity in other ornaments, in weapons, in games, in modes of burial, and many other customs, we think it may fairly be assumed that they all derived these customs from a common source, or that at some unknown period, some intercourse existed of which these things are the surviving traces. The antiquity of the art of tattooing is undoubted. Herodotus speaks of it as used by the Thracians, and I have always held that the Picts were probably tat- tooed, and perhaps the ancient Britains likewise, and that geometrical patterns and other markings similar to those in New Zealand and North America found on ancient stone monuments in Europe, probably denoted the tribal mark or totem of chieftains, as tattooed or painted upon their persons, but this of course, except from analogy, must remain a conjecture. Doubtless as at the present day, tattooing died out rapidly after contact with civilized races ; but it is somewhat singular, that ON TATTOOING. 233 no trace of tattooing, as far as I am aware, 1 is to be found among the Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, and Roman paintings and sculptures, although these civilized nations must have come in contact with tattooed peoples, unless it had not at that period spread into the regions depicttd by them. The bronze head before alluded to as found in the cemetery of Marzabotto, Bologna, is the only one I know in which tattoo marks, or rather the African tribal cicatrices on the face, are distinctly to be seen. Mr. Swan, who, in his article on the Haidahs, reproduces this bronze head, fancies he sees something like tattoo marks on one of the vases found by Dr. Schliemann ; and I believe it can be plainly traced on some of the Peruvian vases. I pointed out in a note to my paper on " American Shell Work," 2 the strong similarity between the tattoo marks of the Nagas as portrayed by Dr. Watt in the Colonial and Jndian Exhibition, and those on the curious shell masks found in grave-mounds in America; and a still more remarkable coincidence in connection with this subject has since come to my notice. The shell masks of which I have spoken, have diagonal lines across the cheek, and some have a hole with a line or two lines proceeding from it, and sometimes two others crossing it, extending over what may be supposed to be the chin. Now it is a singular fact that exactly the same mark appears on the chin of the gigantic stone image from Easter Island now under the portico of the British Museum. Whether these marks represent tattooing, as affirmed by Mr. Dall, and whether then, as now, these markings on the chin denoted a female, must be left to further investigation ; but it is a subject worthy, I believe, of the especial notice of travellers and anti- quaries, for it appears to me of great anthropological interest. The implements employed are also deserving 1 Since writing this I have found that in the picture at Thebes before referred to, of the time of Sethosis I., in which the four distinct human races are depicted, tattooing is observable on one-fourth of the figures. See " President's Address," Journal of Anthropological Institute, April 1870. 2 Journal of Anthropological Institute, November 1886. 234 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. of notice, being in many places fragments of human bone, but of these I cannot treat at present. Since writing the above, I have been favoured with a sight of a book recently published by Herr Joest, on the subject, and if the Japanese tattooing represented in the plates is not supplemented by painting, it must be conceded that the Japanese are the most skilful tattooers in the world. The patterns resemble those on Japanese silks, and might readily be mistaken for a tight-fitting garment of that material. Such, indeed, seems to be the design, as it is only in use, we are told, among the lower orders, and takes with them the place of garments. CHAPTER XV. TEACES OF PRE-HISTORIC COMMERCE IN EUROPE. 1 Importance of the Subject of Pre-historic Commerce Cups of Similar Pattern in Mycenae, Corneto, and Cornwall The Golden Armour of Mold Lunulse in Ireland and in Cor- neto Buttons and Fibulae Were they Manufactured in Ireland, and of Irish Gold ? Identity of Various Articles in Ireland and Etruria Irish Legends Firbolgs and Leather Bags of Miners Gold the Attraction to the Etruscans Ingots of Gold in Irish Bogs The Tumuli of New Grange and Dowth possibly Etruscan Yallancy's Reference to Etruscan Games Mr. Walhouse on Pre-historic Commerce with India The Beryl Barter Jade and Amber Mr. Boyd-Dawkins on Etruscan and Phoaiiician Trade-routes. THE subject of commerce, as carried on in pre-historic times, is of interest alike to the anthropologist, the archaeologist, and the student of folklore and legends ; for, if the extent of that commerce and its routes could be well defined, much that is obscure in the unwritten history of mankind would become clear ; since it is evident that variations in physical type, in language, in religion, in manners and customs, in legends and in the arts, would arise from a long- continued intercourse between barbarous and civilized, or semi-civilized races. In the absence of written history, this intercourse can be traced only through legends, such as those recorded in the earlier part of this volume, or by the vestiges discovered in tombs, in the refuse-heaps known as kitchen-middens, or in the remains of long-buried cities destroyed by the hand of Time, by some sudden natural calamity, or by the inroads of enemies ; and it 1 Journal of Anthropological Institute, August 1884. 236 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. is a singular and significant fact that, in the majority of cases, the relics brought to light by the spade of the arch geological explorer, confirm in a wonderful manner legends which have been handed down from time immemorial. As an illustration of this, I have thought it might perhaps be of interest to call attention, in the first place, to three cups of gold discovered one some years ago in Cornwall, another at Mycenae by Dr. Schliemann, and the third in the Necropolis of old Tarquinii. The first, of which a full description is given in the Archae- ological Journal for September 1867, has been con- sidered of sufficient importance to be figured in two of Dr. Evans's valuable works, that on Ancient Stone Implements and that on Bronze Implements. The prominence thus given to this particular find impressed it strongly upon my mind, and I was therefore especially interested in seeing a gold cup which, as far as memory serves, is almost identical with the Cornish example, in the Museum at Corneto, being one of the numerous and very important relics found in the Necropolis of the ancient Etruscan city of Tarquinii. I was par- ticularly struck with the crumpled-up handle, which seemed to suggest an identity with that of the British cup, as having been made of very thin gold, bent or waved, so as to resemble a ribbon. The third cup, that discovered by Dr. Schliemann among the treasures of Mycenae, although bearing a strong general resemblance to the other two, differs from them in shape, but all three are undoubtedly of the same type : they are all of a corrugated pattern, apparently produced by the same means, that is, by beating out a thin plate of gold over a carved model of' wood, stone, or perhaps bronze, the handle being riveted on afterwards. A few other articles of a similar style, and almost of the same pattern, are known, one being an armlet of gold, found in Lincolnshire, and another, the splendid gold corselet from Mold in Flintshire, now in the British Museum ; but the pattern of the latter is much more elaborate, the plain ribs being alternated with bands of raised TRACES OF PRE-HISTORIC COMMERCE IN EUROPE. 237 balls, the effect of which is very fine ; nevertheless, Mr. Franks, no mean authority, classes this corselet with the Cornish cup and the Lincolnshire armlet, and also with some other golden ornaments called lunulse, some of which are found corrugated, although the majority are plain thin plates of gold, in the form of a crescent, hence their name ; their use is somewhat uncertain, although they are commonly regarded as ornaments for the head, or gorgets. And amongst them I must not fail to notice one of great size and beauty, discovered in Ireland, which Keating says was " a chain, or collar, or breastplate, worn on the neck of the judge when on the bench, and which it was believed would close and choke him if he gave wrong judgment." This splendid specimen, figured in Vol. V. of the Archceologia, is not only corrugated, but ornamented round the edges somewhat after the fashion of the Mold corselet. The great majority of these moon-shaped articles have been found in Ireland, fifteen of them being in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy, whilst four have been found in Cornwall, two in Scotland, and some nearly resembling them are reported in French Bretagne and in Denmark. Of these, there was also one, and I think parts of others, in the case containing the cup, in the Museum of Tarquinia-Corneto, having been found in the Necropolis of Tarquinii, but whether with the cup I cannot say. There is yet another class of golden articles frequently made in a corrugated form, and abounding in Ireland, where they are supposed to have been worn as buttons or clasps to fasten the outer garment, although it is probable that they may have served as money, and these also, but of a small size, reappear at Tarquinia-Corneto. From their shape they were possibly either the origin of, or derived from, the fibulce, which are so numerous in Etruscan and Roman tombs. These fibulae were chiefly of bronze, and most of the articles to which I have referred above are assigned to the Bronze age. It is certain that the corrugated pattern of the cups and of the Mold corselet is similar to that of numerous 238 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. bronze shields, chiefly Etruscan, whilst I must not omit to mention that the pattern of the Mold corselet is reproduced in a small but very elegant cap or diadem of gold, in the museum of the Royal Irish Academy. There are numerous other points of resemblance between articles found in ancient Etruria and Ireland, but at present I will content myself with mentioning one more only, namely, the bronze horns or trumpets, which visitors to the British Museum may compare, and will not fail to be struck with the strong similarity. Mr. Blight has observed that " it is very remarkable that all the Cornish gold ornaments have their counter- parts in Ireland ; " but I venture to think that it is still more remarkable that Irish and Cornish pre-historic ornaments, whether in gold or bronze, should have their counterparts in Etruria and Greece : yet so it is, and I think it will be allowed that it is a matter of extreme interest and importance to trace out when and by what means the intercourse thus indicated took place. It is the custom at the present day to assign certain forms of ornament and certain implements, whether of stone or of bronze, to stages of culture ; to suppose that man, in his earliest stage, will naturally resort to a certain form of stone implement ; and that consequently these things may have been invented independently in most, if not in all the various countries wherein they are found. That this may have been the case sometimes, and with the simplest tools and ornaments, I should be sorry to deny ; but I believe, and have always held, that the more complex forms of weapons, and of ornaments the advance in culture from the savage to the agriculturist, from the stone-user to the worker in metal were the results of an intercourse carried on by means little known or understood, but which is in- dicated alike by language, by manners and customs, by variations of race-type, by traditions, and lastly, by relics widely distributed, yet evidently the work of the same people. No one will, I suppose, imagine that the three golden cups and the other articles I have mentioned, could have been independently designed in TEACES OF FEE-HISTORIC COMMERCE IN EUROPE. 239 Greece, in Etruria, in Cornwall, and in Ireland ; there- fore it becomes of great interest to ascertain how these things and doubtless with them many others of a more perishable nature were transferred from country to country. The greater abundance of some of the articles mentioned, in Ireland, would seem to indicate that they were manufactured in that country, and thence trans- ferred to the other distant lands wherein they have been found ; but it seems more probable that the pattern, having been derived from the shores of the Mediterranean, was afterwards reproduced by Irish goldsmiths from native metal. It is possible that an analysis might prove the source whence the gold com- posing these ornaments was derived, that of Ireland being exceptionally pure. That the workmen and the patterns came originally from the shores of the Mediter- ranean there can be little doubt. Dr. Schliemann, in describing the cup I have taken as an example, speaks of it as being of the well-known furrowed pattern of the Greeks, for which they had a definite name. Mr. Gladstone thinks the ornaments found at Mycenae may have had a foreign origin, and it is certain that some of them have their counterparts in Assyria ; but ancient Greece collected her stores from many sources, and if some can be traced to Assyria, others were as clearly derived from Egypt. 1 Assyrian, Greek, and Egyptian influences are plainly perceptible in Etruria, but in all these countries it is evidently the idea which has been interchanged, to be worked out differently in each country, according to the genius of the people. It is similarity, rather than identity ; but as regards the gold and bronze relics of Etruria and Ireland, there appears in many cases to be absolute identity : therefore it seems evident, either that the articles themselves 1 Mr. Flinders Petrie's discoveries in Egypt prove that before the days of Abraham an extensive commerce was carried on between that country, Greece, and Phoenicia, for he has found in the same tomb, Greek, Phoenician, Cypriote, and Egyptian pottery, some of which he identifies with that found by Schliemann at Mycenae, fixing the approximate date of manufacture at 1400 to 1200 B.C. 210 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. were conveyed from the one country to the other by commerce, or that the people of the two countries were the same. The first is, of course, the proposition which will be most generally accepted ; nevertheless there may be a certain amount of consideration accorded to the latter. Irish legends invariably bring the heroes of their history, and the founders of their nation, from Greece or some Mediterranean land, and a certain amount of truth is allowed to attach to these legends, although it is generally supposed that by " Greece " some nearer land is indicated, probably Spain. But if we read these legends by the light of archaeology, it does not seem improbable that the Mediterranean may at least have contributed its quota to the various legendary migrations. The late Sir William Wilde pointed out that traces of the three legendary races, the Firbolgs, whom he identifies with the Belgse, the Tuatha de Dannans, and the Milesians, are still to be found in Ireland. 1 The colony of Partholan, said to have been destroyed by pestilence, and the Tuatha de Dannans, celebrated as necromancers, would seem to denote the more civilized Eastern nations, Phoenician or Etruscan. The great battle of Moytura, fought between the Firbolgs and the Tuatha de Dannans, gave the latter the ascendancy ; but in this battle both sides are said to have used metal weapons, and to have had Druid priests and enchantresses. The Firbolgs, being defeated, are said to have retired to Arran, in Galway Bay, and " there erected the most stupendous stone forts of cyclo- pean unmortared masonry that now remain in Europe, with walls eighteen feet thick, resembling those of Mycenae." 2 In reading these stories, and in seeing the very sub- stantial proofs that the stories are not wholly mythical, we are tempted to believe that colonies, differing in 1 Tuatha means Commander ; de, Gods ; Dannan, Art or Poetry, being the three tribes of this people (Warner). 2 Sir W. Wilde, Ireland, Past and Present. TRACES OF PRE-HISTORIC COMMERCE IN EUROPE. 241 race, must have been planted in Ireland at various times, and that the Pelasgi, or whoever were the con- structors of the cyclopean buildings, who preceded the Etruscans in Italy, must also have found their way to Ireland. The Firbolgs of the battle of Moytura, it must be observed, are no longer the rude Belgae, de- scribed by Sir Wm. Wilde as found entombed with flint weapons and shell ornaments, but with no remains of metal, covered with huge stones and a mound of earth ; they have attained to the knowledge of metal weapons, have chiefs or kings, a settled government, and a religion described as Druidical, and apparently similar to that of their opponents, the Tuatha de Dannans. This change we can only suppose to have been caused by foreign influence, and for this foreign in- fluence we must look to countries already acquainted with the use of metal, and practising that mode of architecture, and those religious rites, which they would seem to have introduced among the Firbolgs, whose name Warner translates as " creeping or cave men" although Keating gives a legend that they were the descendants of the first Greek colonists, who had re- turned to Greece, been made slaves of there, and after- wards seized Greek ships and returned to Ireland, and he derives the term Firbolg from Fir, signifying men, and Bolg, a lag, from the leathern bags they had been compelled to wear, to carry clay dug trom pits to the top of hills, to make a soil upon the rocks for cultivation. 1 I do not know what traces of the terraced culti- vation, so much in use in Southern Europe, are to be found in Ireland, but the leathern bag may have another signification, for in the very interesting account given by Gmelin, Lepechin, and Pallas, of the mines worked on the south-east borders of the Ural moun- tains, presumably by the Arimaspi, prior to the conquest of the country by the Tatars, and before any knowledge of iron, we are told " Besides some implements, the use of which is unknown, there were wedges and 1 Keating's History of Ireland. 242 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. hammers all of copper that had been smelted, but without any particle of gold in them. Instead of sledges they seemed to have used large stones of a long shape, on which are to be seen marks which show that handles had been fastened to them. They seem to have scraped out the gold with the fangs of boars, and collected it in leather bags or pockets, some of which have been found." * Now, as there seems to be no doubt that it was the search for metal whether gold, tin, or copper which tempted foreigners to our shores in the remote times of which we are speaking, and as it is well known that gold was found in Ireland iu considerable quantities, we seem to see in these Firbolgs, with their leather bags, a colony of miners from Asia or from Greece, establishing themselves where they found the precious metal, making themselves kings or chiefs over the barbarous natives, instructing them in the arts, espe- cially of metallurgy, and giving to them their own name (Firbolgs). That gold was an article of commerce in very early times in Ireland is proved by numerous dis- coveries of ingots, as well as of manufactured articles, in bogs, and in excavations for railways, &c. Vol. III. of the Archceologia gives a long list of discoveries of gold in Irish bogs, amongst the articles being several ingots, some of which are described as of the form of " heaters for smoothing," three of them weighing seven pounds and a half; whilst the innumerable manufactured articles prove that it was not only miners and merchants who thus established themselves, but also artificers of no mean skill. The question arises whether these artificers were the Firbolgs, or that later race, designated as Tuatha de Dannans, whom I have ventured to regard as Etruscans ? Returning to the three cups and other articles of gold with which I commenced this chapter, I may point out that Dr. Evans compares the Cornish cup with one of amber found near Brighton, and with another of Kim- meridge shale found at Broad Down near Honiton, the 1 Jacobs' Historical Enquiry into the Production and Con- sumption of the Precious Mdcds. TRACES OF PRE-HISTORIC COMMERCE IN EUROPE. 243 latter being very similar in shape ; but if we go thus far for analogies, we may perhaps be allowed still further scope, and refer to sculptured monuments in Tartary, upon which a figure appears holding a cup of a very similar shape, and also, if the engravings are to be trusted, of the same corrugated pattern, as though it were an object of veneration, or of some espocial signifi- cance. It may possibly have been a golden cup similar to these, of which we are told that Darius the Great, having one only, valued it so highly that he placed it every iivjjht under his pillow. We thus seem to be able to trace cups of this par- ticular pattern from Tartary to Greece, Etruria, and Great Britain, and may ask whether they were manu- factured originally in Tartary, possibly by the Arima^pi, of whom so many fables have been related, carried by their owners from place to place, perhaps for purposes of divination, and at last buried with them as their most precious possession. If the Firbolgs were Scythians, and acquainted with metallurgic arts, it is of course possible that articles of this especial furrowed pattern might have been manu- factured by them in Ireland, and thence dispersed ; but if the Firbolgs are in any way to be identified with the rude miners of the Ural mountains, a description of whose implements I have given, they would not seem to have been capable of the delicate work exhibited in the cups, the lunulse, the Irish diadem, the Mold corselet, the Lincolnshire armlet, and other articles ; and we must therefore suppose these to belong to a later period, and to have been introduced by a second Scythic wave, or by another people. Seeing the strung resemblance between these articles and those to be found in the museum of Corneto-Tarquinia, and remembering how famous the Etruscans were for their bronzes and gold work, I prefer to think that these articles were in- troduced by the Etruscans, either directly or indirectly ; that they had obtained the pattern at least of the cups through Greece, the latter country having received it perhaps from Persia, and originally from Scythia. 244 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. With the Cornish cup were deposited articles of ivory, glass beads, pottery of a reddisli-hrown colour, and a bronze spear-head, with other fragments of metal, all consistent with that Etruscan ownership or origin which I have ventured to assign to it. " The Etruscans, masters of the sea," says Dr. Birch, " imported enamelled ware from Egypt, glass from Phoenicia, shells from the Red Sea, and tin from the coasts of Spain or Britain." Whether this trade was carried on wholly by sea, or whether a trade-route existed at this remote period across Europe, cannot be very easily decided, but it seems to me that it would not be impossible to trace these early merchants by their wares, through the Swiss lake villages and Gaul to our own shores, and across Cornwall and Wales to Ireland, in which island there would seem to have been a more permanent settlement made. Nevertheless, it is easy to see that a coasting voyage round Spain, destined for Britain, might be driven more than once by storm or contrary winds to Ireland, which, once discovered, and found to possess metals of various kinds, would certainly be revisited, and probably made a depot for commerce, or a settle- ment for mining purposes. Indications that one at least of the races thus visiting Ireland was Etruscan may, if I mistake not, be found, not only in the articles of bronze and gold I have de- scribed, but also in traditions and in the pages of history. Casar's assertion that the gods of the Gauls and Britons were the same as those of Rome ; that the Druids made use of Greek characters, although appar- ently ignorant of the Greek language ; J the great in- fluence possessed by women, especially in Ireland, where I believe the genealogies were traced in the ft male line as in Etruria; the extraordinary powers of divination ascribed to the Druids and to the Tuatha de Dannans, seem to stamp them as of Etruscan race, or at least as having derived their traditions, as well as their guld and bronze implements, and perhaps their mode of sepulture, from Etruria. The great tumuli of New 1 Ccesar, Book VI. p. 17 ; V. p. 48 ; I. p. 25. TRACES OF PRE-HISTORIC COMMERCE IN EUROPE. 243 Grange, Dowth, &c., were, unfortunately, rifled by the Danes, but the markings upon the stones might fairly be looked upon as Etruscan, and there is every reason to suppose that the arrangement of tlie tombs, and the treasures they contained, were such as might still be found in those great tumuli, which evidently preceded the underground painted tombs in the Necropolis of old Tarquinii, if only some competent archaBolo^ist would devote t> them the attention which has been given to our own great tumuli ; and if that diligent and scientific research could be extended to the desolate site of the city of Tarq 1 inii, I feel assured that many discoveries of infinite value to archeology and anthro- pology would reward the explorers. I have dwelt in this chapter chiefly on the evidences of pre-historic commerce between Mediterranean peoples and our own islands, as afforded by gold and bronze articles, but the subject, might be indefinitely enlarged, and I trust some one fully conversant with the subject will take the matter up, and assign to each race its proper share in spreading civilization by means of commerce from East to YVest. L have treated more particu'arly of the Etruscans, because there seems a tendency to ignore all pre-historic commerce except as carried on t'irough the Phoenicians, whereas it appears to me that Etruscan in- fluences are far more evident than Phoenician, for I do not think that any of the articles I have mentioned as dis- covered alike in Ireland and in t^ e Necropolis of old Tarquinii have been found among undoubted Phoenician remains, although there are doubtless others which may be referred to that source, and some which may also be traced to Greece and to Egypt. I feel convinced that a careful study of pre-historic commerce, as revealed by relics such as those I have indicated, when undertaken by competent workers, will eventually throw a flood of light upon the anthropology and archsBology of Great Britain and Ireland. In pointing out the connection existing in the Bronze age between Etruria and Ireland I am not bunging forward a new theory ; General Valiancy many years 246 ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES. ago gave as one indication of this intercourse, the fact that the survival of one form of divination, existing in a game played with five small stones, is called in Ireland clocha tag, or tag stones, from Tages, the prince of Etruscan diviners ; but that to which I wish particu- larly to call attention is, that this connection appears to be made much clearer by recent discoveries in the course of the explorations in the Necropolis of old Tar- quinii, which I think in the interests of science should be carefully watched, noted, and extended; for the dis- coveries made there since 1878 seem to supply one of the missing links in the chain of evidence connecting Ea