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

by Alfred C. Haddon

Count Goblet d’Alviella points out that in Europe the geometric style of ornamentation embraces two periods, that of painted and that of incised decoration. “Now in this latter period, which is everywhere the most ancient, the gammadion is only found on the whorls of Hissarlik and the pottery of the Terramares. We have, therefore, two early homes of our symbol, one on the shores of the Hellespont, the other in the north of Italy.

“Was it propagated from one country to another by the usual medium of commerce? It must be admitted that at this period the relations between the Troad and the basin of the Po were very doubtful. Etruria certainly underwent Asiatic influences; but whether the legendary migration of Tyrrhenius and of his Lydians be admitted or not, this influence was only felt at a period subsequent to the ‘palafittes’ [pile dwellings] of Emilia, if not to the Necropolis of Villanova.

“There remains, therefore, the supposition that the gammadion might have been introduced into the two countries by the same nation.

“We know the Trojans came originally from Thrace. There is, again, a very plausible tradition to the effect that the ancestors, or predecessors, of the Etruscans, and, in general, the earliest known inhabitants of northern Italy, entered the peninsula from the north or north-east, after leaving the valley of the Danube. It is, therefore, in this latter region that we must look for the first home of the gammadion. It must be remarked that when, later on, the coinage reproduces the types and symbols of the local religions, the countries nearest the Danube, such as Macedon and Thrace, are amongst those whose coins frequently exhibit the gammadion, the traskele, and the triskele. Besides, it is especially at Athens that it is found on the pottery of Greece proper, and we know that Attica is supposed to have been primitively colonised by the Thracians. ‘The nations who had invaded the Balkan peninsula and colonised Thrace,’ writes M. Maspero, ‘crossed, at a very early period, the two arms of the sea which separated them from Asia, and transported there most of the names which they had already introduced into their European home. There were Dardanians in Macedon, on the borders of the Axios, as in the Troad, on the borders of the Ida, Kebrenes at the foot of the Balkans, and a town, Kebrene, near Ilium.’[195] Who will be astonished that these emigrants had taken with them, to the opposite shore of the Hellespont, the symbols as well as the rites and traditions which formed the basis of their creed in the basin of the Danube?

“Even when it occurs in the north and west of Europe, with objects of the bronze period, it is generally on pottery recalling the vases with geometric decorations of Greece and Etruria, and later, on coins reproducing, more or less roughly, the monetary types of Greece. It seems to have been introduced into Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland, in the same manner as that in which the runic writing was brought from the Danube valley to the shores of the Baltic and the ocean. It may have penetrated into Gaul, and from there into England and Ireland, either through Savoy, from the time of the ‘palafittes,’ or with the pottery and jewelry imported by sea and by land from the East, or, lastly, with the Macedonian coins which represent the origin of Gallic coinage.

“We have already seen how it was brought among the islands of the Mediterranean, and into Greece proper, then from Greece to Sicily and even Southern Italy. It must be observed that even at Rome it seems to have always been connected with the traditions of the East. We must not forget that the Christianity of the Catacombs was likewise a religion of Oriental origin.”

So much for the western fylfot. The oriental form even in the extreme east of Asia can be traced without difficulty to the svastika of India. There can be no doubt that the fylfot and the svastika are genetically allied, but it is not at present very easy to demonstrate all the links of the chain. Here again I quote from Count Goblet d’Alviella.

“The svastika does not appear on the coins struck in Bactriana, or in India, by Alexander and his Indo-Greek successors. Even amongst the Indo-Scythians, whose coinage copies the Greek types, it is only visible on barbarous imitations of the coins of Basu Deva. On the other hand, as we have shown, it adorns the coins of Krananda and the most ancient monetary ingots of India. Moreover, Panina, who already makes mention of the svastika, is sometimes considered to have lived in the middle of the fourth century B.C. It might therefore be possible that the Hindus had known the svastika before feeling in their arts, and even in their symbolism, the influence of the Greek invasion.

“Yet, for the best of reasons, it is neither the Chaldæans, the Assyrians, the Phœnicians, nor even the Egyptians, who can have imported the gammadion to Hindustan.

“There only remain, then, the Persians, whose influence on the nascent arts of India was certainly felt before Alexander. But in Persia itself the gammadion only appears as an exception on a few rare coins approaching our era.