Folklore; Manners and customs; Mythology; Religion
say that the civilised peoples of America, especially the Peruvians, are
Aryan by race. Yet the remains of Peruvian palaces are often by no means
dissimilar in style from the 'Pelasgic' and 'Cyclopean' buildings of
gigantic stones which remain on such ancient Hellenic sites as Argos and
Mycenae. The probability is that men living in similar social
conditions, and using similar implements, have unconsciously and
unintentionally arrived at like results.
[Fig 5. a, A Maori Design; b, Tattoo on a Maori's face: 285.jpg]
Few people who are interested in the question can afford to visit Peru
and Mycenae and study the architecture for themselves. But anyone who is
interested in the strange identity of the human mind everywhere, and in
the necessary forms of early art, can go to the British Museum and
examine the American and early Greek pottery. Compare the Greek key
pattern and the wave pattern on Greek and Mexican vases, and compare the
bird-faces, or human faces very like those of birds, with the similar
faces on the clay pots which Dr. Schliemann dug up at Troy. The latter
are engraved in his book on Troy. Compare the so-called 'cuttle-fish'
from a Peruvian jar with the same figure on the early Greek vases, most
of which are to be found in the last of the classical vase-rooms
upstairs. Once more, compare the little clay 'whorls' of the Mexican and
Peruvian room with those which Dr. Schliemann found so numerous at
Hissarlik. The conviction becomes irresistible that all these objects,
in shape, in purpose, in character of decoration, are the same, because
the mind and the materials of men, in their early stages of civilisation
especially, are the same everywhere. You might introduce old Greek bits
of clay-work, figures or vases, into a Peruvian collection, or might
foist Mexican objects among the clay treasures of Hissarlik, and the
wisest archaeologist would be deceived. The Greek fret pattern
especially seems to be one of the earliest that men learnt to draw. The
svastika, as it is called, the cross with lines at right angles to each
limb, is found everywhere--in India, Greece, Scotland, Peru--as a natural
bit of ornament. The allegorising fancy of the Indians gave it a mystic
meaning, and the learned have built I know not what worlds of religious
theories on this 'pre-Christian cross,' which is probably a piece of
hasty decorative work, with no original mystic meaning at all. {289}
Ornaments of this sort were transferred from wood or bone to clay, almost
as soon as people learned that early art, the potter's, to which the
Australians have not attained, though it was familiar to the not distant
people of New Caledonia. The style of spirals and curves, again, once
acquired (as it was by the New Zealanders), became the favourite of some
races, especially of the Celtic. Any one who will study either the
ornaments of Mycenae, or those of any old Scotch or Irish collection,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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