Part 18

Although the comparison of weapons from various parts of the globe can have no other object than to trace out an original connexion, I did not venture to build upon the coincidence of this weapon in these regions, any argument for the common origin of the people by whom it was used. Nor do I think that I should have been justified in assuming such origin upon the grounds of the identity of a single weapon. Such identity may have arisen in three ways:--(1) it may have arisen independently by the spontaneous development of like weapons under similar conditions of life; (2) the weapon itself may have been communicated from some primal source; (3) the races using it may have been themselves derived from a common origin. Of these, the first view, viz. the independent origin of the weapon, would perhaps strike any one at first sight, before having studied the conservatism and persistency of type which is so especially characteristic of savages, as the most probable; it appears so exceedingly simple in its form and uses to our trained and educated minds, that it seems hardly necessary to account for it in any other way; besides which, there are slight differences between the Indian and Australian boomerangs, which have been considered by some to distinguish the two weapons.

I will not here revert to the arguments which I have used to combat this opinion. Suffice to say, that I have since been favoured with much valuable information on the subject by Sir Walter Elliot, who has frequently accompanied the natives of India in their hunting expeditions with this weapon. He says that it is formed on the grain of the wood, like the Australian boomerang, the curve varying with the bend of the stem; it is whirled horizontally, with the end foremost, like the Australian practice, and is used by two tribes in the Deccan, viz. the Kolis of Guzerat and the Marawárs of Madura, but more especially in its simplest form by the former, who are of the Dravidian or black race of the Deccan. In a letter to me he says, speaking of these tribes:--‘I have seen both, and, indeed, served ten years in the latter district (Southern Mahratta), where the crooked stick is used by all the lower orders every Sunday during the hot season, when all agricultural labour is at a stand. The villagers turn out in large numbers, and scour the jungle armed with these sticks. Everything that rises is knocked over; deer, hares, birds, even the wild hog and the tiger are occasionally (though rarely, of course) included in the bag. I have seen a line of upwards of 100 men and boys, and the boomerang whirling about in such numbers, and with such precision, that even birds on the wing are brought down. I never met with any regularly formed specimens, except in the South; those in the North were mere angular sticks, of very various form, as natural branches occurred; the favourite form was a rather obtuse angle--nearly a right angle.’ Thus, whether we regard the purposes for which it is used, the material of which it is constructed, the manner of throwing, or the varieties of its form, the Indian and Australian boomerang is virtually the same weapon; and I think those who dispute their identity appear rather to have had in view the ‘collery stick’ of Madras and of the Marawárs than the boomerang of the Kolis.

We may therefore, I think, fairly consider the causes which may have led to the adoption of this weapon as sprung from a common source.

Since my last communication to this Institution, Professor Huxley has given to the world, in a paper read at the meeting of the International Congress of Prehistoric Archaeology--of which I had the honour to be general secretary--in August, 1868, his views ‘on the distribution of the races of mankind, as bearing on their antiquity’.[185] The paper created a considerable sensation in the scientific world, owing to the boldness of the generalizations contained in it, and, it may be added, a certain amount of opposition. The accompanying map (Plate XVII) is taken from one drawn by Professor Huxley himself for the Ethnological Society, to illustrate this subject (_Journ. Ethno. Soc._ (1870) N. S. ii. 404-12).

Basing his distribution of the human race on the principle that the characters of the hair and complexion are more permanent, and of greater value as a means of classification, than the bony structure of man, Professor Huxley traces back the numerous varieties of tribes and races into what, for the present, may be regarded as four primary groups.

Commencing, for the convenience of my present subject, with the highest, or those which have shown themselves most capable of development--which, in all probability, is the wrong end of the scale to begin with, if we regarded them in their natural succession--the first of these groups is what he terms Xanthochroid type (the distribution of which is marked [shading] in the map), a people characterized by yellow hair and fair complexions, with blue eyes, who form a strong element in the composition of the population of this country and a great part of Europe, extending from thence through Scandinavia and Central Europe eastward into Northern India. Next to these he classes the great Mongoloid race (marked by various shades of [shading] on the map), with yellow-brown complexions and black hair and eyes, of which the Kalmucs and Tartars represent the purest types, occupying the whole of Northern Europe and Asia, from Lapland to Behring Strait, and down to the southernmost parts of China; including also the Esquimaux, the Polynesians, and the whole of the inhabitants of the two continents of America. Thirdly, the Negro race (marked [shading] and [shading] in the map), long headed, with woolly hair, which has its head quarters in all that part of Africa south of the Sahara, but has outlying branches widely detached, and occupying a broken line of islands extending in a belt, from the Andaman Isles in the Bay of Bengal, to the peninsula of Malacca, New Guinea, New Caledonia, and the adjoining isles, and having its southmost limits in the distant island of Tasmania. Lastly, we come to the Australioid race (marked [shading]), distinguished by dark chocolate complexions and black eyes, with long heads and soft wavy hair; these the Professor, upon physiological grounds, and after intimate acquaintance with these people in the distant regions in which they are found, traces in three distinct portions of the globe, viz. Australia, the Deccan of India, and Egypt; the three identical countries, it will be observed, in which, unconscious of Professor Huxley’s distribution of races, I had traced the occurrence of the boomerang. I think, therefore, it is not an unreasonable conjecture, assuming the correctness of Professor Huxley’s premises, that this peculiar weapon may be a relic of the original Australioid stock, which having been originally an effective weapon for all purposes amongst the aborigines of this race, and continuing still to be used as such in Australia, survived in India and in ancient Egypt merely as an implement for the chase and for amusement, much in the same way that, in Europe, bows and arrows have survived amongst children to the present day.

In the remarks which I made (p. 127) upon the varieties of the African boomerang, I drew attention to the peculiarly curved form of the Nubian and Abyssinian sword, and I ventured an opinion that its form may have been originally derived from that of the boomerang, of which weapon a variety, constructed of wood, is still in use by the inhabitants of the country; and I see no reason to doubt that the Abyssinian sword may have been the prototype of those numerous allied forms of iron weapons, the ‘hunga-munga’, &c., which throughout Africa are still used as missiles, and thrown with a rotatory motion like the boomerang. My conjecture on this subject appears to receive some confirmation from the very peculiar construction of one of these swords, which has lately been added to the museum of this Institution, and which is represented in Plate XIX, figure 1. The angular form of the blade, swelling in the middle, presents such a close affinity to the Australian boomerang, as to strike even those who have not been led, by the considerations I have mentioned, to look for a coincidence in these weapons. I noticed at the same time the very great resemblance between the rudimentary shields of the Australians and those of some of the inhabitants of the valley of the Upper Nile, which may also perhaps be accounted for in the same way. With a view of further connecting this primitive form of shield with similar defensive weapons in India, it is worthy of notice that the hand-shield, having antelopes’ horns projecting from it, a representation of which was given in my first lecture, Plate X, figs. 66, 67_a_, and 69 (many of which are furnished with a small iron shield, or guard for the hand, though some are without this accessory), is used--Sir Walter Elliot now informs me--precisely in the same way as the Australian and African parrying-shields, viz. by catching the arrows and darts of the assailant, and parrying them off with the horns, thus favouring the conjecture that I ventured to put forward, that the square, oblong, and circular targets are defensive weapons of comparatively recent origin, being represented in a primitive stage of culture by a simple parrying-stick, derived originally from the club. The club is, as a general rule, the only defensive guard employed by races in the lowest stages of culture. These seem to have been replaced by parrying-sticks, held in the centre, and subsequently hollowed to receive the hand, or furnished with hand-guards, forming rudimentary shields; of which stage in the development of the weapon we are now able to establish connected traces in the three countries under consideration.

If the comparisons which I have made, and the conclusions I have ventured to draw from them, are found to stand the test of further investigation, as it appears to me reasonable to hope they will, the importance of studying the forms and uses of these primitive weapons in connexion with other sociological and biological phenomena, as a means of tracing back the early history of mankind, will be well established. Of this, however, we may feel certain, that if a connexion formerly existed between the inhabitants of India, Australia, and Egypt, the evidence of such connexion will not be limited either to the colour of the hair and skin, or to the resemblance of their weapons, but will be found in other customs and institutions which they brought with them from their fatherland. The important generalizations of Professor Huxley, whether or not they ultimately hold good, have had the good effect of drawing attention to a comparison of the inhabitants of these countries; and though it would be foreign to my present purpose to anticipate the result of these investigations in other branches not immediately connected with my present subject, I may mention that officers acquainted with India and Australia have since pointed out resemblances in the hymeneal and other customs of those countries, which have not before been noticed, but which, when put together and compared, making all due allowance for the variations which are inevitable in the continuous development of all human arts and institutions, will, I doubt not, tend to give confirmation to the theory of races which the author of it has so ably advanced.

Having strayed thus far into the geological and biological aspect of the question, it is necessary to go a step further in order to apply the subject more generally to the origin of weapons, and at the same time to point out some difficulties which stand in the way of accepting this theory of races--difficulties of which Professor Huxley himself appears by his paper to be fully sensible.

The detached portions of the Australioid race are separated from each other by seas of considerable depth, and the same thing applies to the Negroid race. The Australians, he points out, though possessing ample materials for the construction of canoes, have never learnt to make any that are capable of traversing the great seas which separate them from their apparent kindred in other lands, and it is unlikely they should have forgotten the art of navigation if they had once known it. It is inconceivable, therefore, that they should have migrated from Australia to the Deccan, and to Egypt, during the existing geographical arrangement of sea and land, more especially as no trace of such migration is found upon intervening isles. He points out, however, that great geographical changes have probably taken place, and that those changes, in so far as our knowledge of them goes, are of a nature to account for the phenomena observed.

The region of the negro race in Africa is separated from Northern Africa and from Europe by the desert of Sahara, of which there is geological evidence to show that it was sea at a recent geological period. The same applies to the Deccan of India, which is separated from the Himalaya by the great alluvial plains of the Indus and the Ganges, which, having probably formed a strait before the miocene epoch, may have divided the black men inhabiting the Deccan from the Xanthochroid and Mongoloid races to the north. At the same time large tracts now occupied by the sea may then have been land, uniting or connecting by a chain of easily accessible islands the regions in which men of the same colour and physical peculiarities are now found. But it will be seen by the map that the lines of distribution of two of the races, the Negroid and the Australioid, cross each other, and this, according to the theory of migration by land, appears to involve a succession of submersions and upheavals during the human period, which it is difficult to account for.

The distribution of races, according to supposed original distinctions of colour and complexion, will be seized upon by polygenists as an argument in their favour; for it will be said that, according to this theory, the distinctions of race in the earliest times must have been as great, or greater, than they are at present.

There are three ways in which it has been attempted to account for these early distinctions of colour and persistency of type--(1) by supposing the several races of man to have been separately created upon distinct continents of land; (2) by assuming that on each primaeval continent, man was evolved from the anthropoid apes of that continent;[186] or (3), by supposing that these divisions of race, remotely and immeasurably distant though they be, nevertheless carry us only a short way back into the history of man, and that still earlier ages, if we could penetrate them, would show the races of man united.

Now, with respect to the first assumption, that of creation, though we are not, of course, in a position to deny the possibility of it, I confess it appears to me unwarranted by any of the phenomena of nature. We have no knowledge of the special creation of any organized being; and how can we scientifically assume as probable, that, for the probability of which there is no sort of evidence of a nature that inductive science would be warranted in building upon? Continuity and development are seen to be the order of the universe. Man is seen to be, both mentally and physically, amenable to that law; and on what grounds can we assume that he was ever an exception to it? I cannot conceive how those who believe geological changes to have been brought about by causes which are still in operation in our own day, and who make great calls upon time in order to reconcile those causes to the phenomena observed, can, in treating biological phenomena, advocate belief in so great a break in the observed order of the universe as is implied by the special creation of man. Still less willing am I, in the absence of more cogent argument than has ever yet been advanced in support of it, to assent to hypotheses of the separate development of races, which appears to me equally at variance with nature. There can be no doubt that all the existing races of man, whatever their colour and physical peculiarities, have greater affinity to each other than any of them have to the apes, or to any other class of animals. The tendency of progress is from simplicity to complexity, from unity to diversity, and it would be a complete inversion of the order of nature that animals so various as the apes should independently produce animals so much resembling each other as the races of man. The recognized law that, with certain variations, like begets like, appears to me to negative this assumption as fully as it would do the notion, if it were put forward, that because the horse and some other classes of the mammalia, say the rhinoceros, for instance, have some affinities in their bony structure, therefore the black horse is descended from the African rhinoceros, and the white horse from that of India. Moreover, all the races of mankind interbreed, and I am at a loss to understand how a circumstance like this, which throughout the animal kingdom is regarded as a proof of unity of species, should be discarded in its application to humanity. If, then, it is true that diversity of colour is as old as the very earliest traces of man, and there is evidence that the several coloured races were inhabitants of distinct continents, which have disappeared through geological changes dispersing and mixing the races, blending the colours and obliterating the traces of their formerly isolated homes; then to the same causes, which produced the mixing and the blending, we must also attribute the original separation. According to the view I hold, we must ask for more time, and still further geological changes, to bring them together again in the primaeval cradle of the human race.

Now, to apply this reasoning to the origin of weapons. The only vestiges of the primaeval tools of mankind now left to us are those constructed of stone; others of the more perishable materials have decayed, and their representatives only have remained in some few cases as survivals. In my last lecture I showed how uniform in shape and in development these stone implements are found to be in all parts of the world, whether derived from the northern or southern continent of America, from Siberia, Australia, India, Africa, or the surface soils and river gravels of Europe. This uniformity of shape has been used as an argument that mankind must have independently designed the same forms of tools in various parts of the world, and that under like conditions, like forms will be produced by men, however remotely separated. I am not prepared to deny the possibility of some of these forms having had an independent origin; but if the proof of it is to be based upon the separation of continents, we see how entirely groundless such an argument is when applied to the earliest ages of humanity. For if, as has been conjectured, the races of man may have been dispersed by geographical changes of land and sea, it is obvious they may have carried with them, from some primal source, the art of manufacturing stone weapons; the resemblance of which is far more satisfactorily accounted for by this means[187] than by supposing such singular and invariable coincidence in design to be the result of independent discovery. As we contemplate man in his lower and lowest conditions, we find the imitative faculty stands out more and more prominently by the absence of those higher qualities which characterize civilized races; and whatever power of originality for the invention of new arts may have been possessed by the earliest inhabitants of the globe, its results appear to have been spread over so vast a lapse of time that it can scarcely be accounted at all as an element in the mental attributes of primaeval man.

I now pass to what has been announced as the subject proper of my present communication, viz. the origin and development of metal tools. I use the word _metal_ intentionally, in preference to specifying bronze, because, although we have good reason for supposing that in Europe, Egypt, Assyria, and the central parts of America, bronze preceded iron as a material for weapons, it is not so certain that this was the case in all parts of Asia; and in Africa we know that iron was the first metal employed by the negroes.

Perhaps no subject has given rise to so much difference of opinion amongst archaeologists as this question of the origin of metal implements, or has been accompanied with such uncertain results, owing to the great mass of conflicting evidence to be dealt with, and the great doubt which rests upon much of it, whether in regard to the casual mention of the subject in ancient authors, or to the often ill-directed researches of modern times. It would be hopeless, in the brief time allotted me on the present occasion, to attempt to throw fresh light on this intricate subject, even if I possessed the materials for so doing. All I shall endeavour to do is, to put together, in as intelligible a form as possible, some of the more salient points upon which archaeologists are divided, and trace the continuity observable in passing from the stone to the metal age.

We have already seen, in speaking of the implements of the stone age, a gradual improvement in form and fabrication, developing itself in proportion as the wild animals which were contemporaneous with the first traces of man in Europe became extinct, partly, no doubt, through the efforts of man himself in exterminating them, and partly, as there seems reason to suppose, owing to an alteration of temperature, rendering the climate unsuited to the constitution and habits of those animals, which therefore migrated by degrees, and the majority of which are now found chiefly, though not exclusively, in arctic regions. Thither they have been accompanied by races of men whose arts and implements show them to be very nearly in a corresponding stage of civilization to the early races, the relics of which are found associated with the same animals in Europe. The simultaneous migration of races of men in the hunting stage of civilization, with the animals, the pursuit of which forms the almost sole occupation of their lives, is well shown in the case of the North American Indians, whose geographical distribution is now almost identical with that of the buffalo. This forms a strong point in the arguments of those who are disposed to attribute all the changes in the world’s civilization to the influx and extermination of antagonistic races. But it must be remembered that progress advances in an increasing ratio, and the phenomenon now seen in America and Australia of a highly civilized race constantly fed by steam-communication from the Old World, driving before it and rapidly exterminating other races so vastly its inferior as the Australians and American Indians, is one which could have had no parallel at the early period of which I am now speaking. We must here look for a slower process, though doubtless the operating causes may, to a great extent, have been the same.

The fabrication of stone implements would of itself lead by degrees to a knowledge of the metals which are contained in stones. Thus, for example, I have here a specimen of a stone mace-head from Central America, figure 2, Plate XIX, composed of a nodule of haematite partially coated with micaceous iron ore, the particles of which are distinctly visible on its glittering surface. The weight of this implement, being nearly double that of a mace-head composed of ordinary stone, would at once attract the notice of the savage fabricator, and lead him to investigate the uses of metal.