Evolution in Art: As Illustrated by the Life-histories of Designs

by Alfred C. Haddon

To employ the language of geology, we have found evidence pointing to certain general laws of stratification. In Further Asia we have found a section which presents us with an almost complete series of strata, whilst in other places where we have been only able to observe two or three layers, we have nevertheless found that certain strata are invariably found superimposed upon others just as regularly as the coal seams are found lying over the carboniferous limestone. As soon as the primitive savage has conceived the idea of obtaining some article which he desires but does not possess, by giving in exchange to its owner something which the latter desires, the principle of money has been conceived.

Shells or necklaces of shells are found everywhere to be employed in the earliest stages. When some men began to make weapons of superior material, as for instance, axes of jade instead of common stone, such weapons naturally soon became media of exchange; when the ox and the sheep, the swine and the goat are tamed, large additions are made to the circulating media of the more advanced communities; then come the metals; the older ornaments of shells and implements of stone are replaced by those of gold (and much later by silver), and by weapons of bronze as in Asia and Europe, and by those of iron in Africa.

Copper and iron circulate either in the form of implements and weapons, such as the axes of West Africa, the hoes of the early Chinese and modern Bahnars, and the ancient Chinese knives, all of which remind us of the axes and half-axes in Homer; or in the form of rings and bracelets, like the manillas of West Africa and the ancient Irish fibulæ, or else in the form of plates or bars of metal, ready to be employed for the manufacture of such articles, as in the case of the iron bars of Laos, the iron discs of the Madis, and the brass rods of the Congo. Again, we are reminded of the mass of pig-iron which Achilles offered as a prize.

It is of the highest importance to observe that such pieces of copper and iron are not weighed, but are appraised by measurement. We shall find that it is only at a period long subsequent to the weighing of gold that the inferior metals are estimated by weight.

The custom of capturing wives, which prevails among the lowest savages, is succeeded by the custom of purchasing wives. The woman is only a chattel on the same footing as the cow or the sheep, and she is accordingly appraised in terms of the ordinary media of exchange employed in her community, whether it be in cows, horses, beads, skins, or blankets. Presently male captives are found useful both to tend flocks, and, as in the East and in the modern Soudan, to guard the harem.

With the discovery of gold, ornaments made at first out of the rough nuggets supersede other ornaments, and presently either such ornaments or portions of gold in plates or lumps are added to the list of media, and the same follows with the discovery of silver. Such ornaments or pieces of gold and silver are estimated in terms of cattle, and the standard unit of the bars or ingots naturally is adjusted to the unit by which it is appraised. Thus we find the Homeric talent, the silver bar of Annam, the Irish unga all equated to the cow, and the Welsh libra, Anglo-Saxon libra, similarly equated to the slave.

With the discovery of the art of weaving, cloths of a definite size everywhere become a medium, as the silk cloth of ancient China, the woollen cloths of the old Norsemen, the toukkiyeh of the Soudan, and the blanket of North America. This fact once more recalls Homer and makes us believe that the robes and blankets and coverlets which Priam brought along with the talents of gold to be the ransom of Hector’s body, all had a definite place in the Homeric monetary system.

“We have seen the Siamese piece of twisted silver wire passing into a coin of European style, and the Chinese bronze knife ending by becoming cash, just as the Homeric talent of gold appears, in weight at least, as the gold stater of historical times. Thus in every point the analogy between what we find in the Homeric Poems and in modern barbarous communities seems complete.

“We may therefore with some confidence assume that we are at liberty to fill up the gaps in the strata of Greek monetary history which lie between Homer and the beginning of coined money on the analogy of the corresponding strata in other regions. This assumption, resting on a broad basis of induction and confirmed by a good deal of evidence special to Greece and Italy, will be found to explain the origin, not only of weight standards in those countries, but of the types on the oldest coins, such as the cow’s head of Samos, the tunny fish of Olbia and Cyzicus, the axe of Tenedos, the tortoise of Aegina, the shield of Bœotia, and the silphium of Cyrene” (pp. 49, 50).

Professor Ridgeway’s view is that while mythological and religious subjects do occur on Greek coins, it can be shown that certain coins, even in historical times, were regarded as the representations of the objects of barter of more primitive times.