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

by Alfred C. Haddon

Dr. W. Wyatt Gill, who resided for twenty-two years in the Hervey Islands, and who has been a very careful observer and recorder of Polynesian customs and beliefs, informs us that “The adzes of the Hervey Islanders are frequently hafted with carved ‘pua’ wood. The carving, which is often admirable, was formerly executed with sharks’ teeth, and was primarily intended for the adorning of their gods. The fine-pointed pattern is known as ‘the sharks’ teeth pattern’ (‘nio mango’). Other figures are each supposed, by a stretch of the imagination, to represent a man squatting down (‘tikitiki tangata’). Some patterns are of recent introduction, and being mere imitations of European designs, are destitute of the significations which invariably are attached to ancient Polynesian carving. The large square holes are known as ‘eel-borings’ (‘ai tuna’); the lateral openings are naturally enough called ‘clefts’ (‘kavava’). To carve was the employment of sacred men.” Dr. Hjalmar Stolpe, of Stockholm, who has made a special study[23] of the ornamental art of these people, found in the museum in Chambéry an adze of this kind; according to the account on the label the stone had belonged to a chief, and it was after the owner’s death shafted in this manner that it might be preserved by his family as a remembrance. Dr. Stolpe continues, “The internal probability of the story confirms the truth of the account. Ancestor worship is a characteristic feature of Polynesian religion. The souls of the departed become the guardian spirits of the survivors. Their worship demanded a visible form, under which offerings could be enjoyed by them, and this was found sometimes in the skull itself of the deceased, which was preserved in the house, sometimes in some article of his property. In the latter case scarcely anything could be more suitable than the stone adze, which was the deceased’s most important implement, and which it required so much toil to make. On the Hervey Islands the transition was easier, as there the stone adze itself is considered as a god. Even the fine plait of coco-nut fibre with which the adze is fastened to the shaft was a god, and the method of binding it had, in Mangaia, been taught by the gods. Both during the operation of plaiting and during the decoration of the adze-shaft songs were sung in a low voice to the gods, that they might further the work. The ‘pua’ wood (Fagræa Berteriana) of which the carved adze-shafts are made may also have a religious significance, for Gill speaks of ‘its long branches being regarded as the road by which the spirits of the dead descended to Hades.’”

The following conclusions of Dr. Stolpe’s appear to be warranted:—“From these researches it appears to me to follow that the peculiarly shafted stone adzes of the Hervey Islands have a religious signification, that they are especially connected with ancestor worship, and that they were probably the very symbols under which this worship was performed.”

Fig. 47.—An erect drum (Kaara), surmounted by the head of a god from Java, in the Copenhagen Museum; from Dr. C. March.

Dr. H. Colley March[24] has gone a step further, and tries to account for the very remarkable form of the handle of the sacred adze. He says, “It is remarkable that the typical Mangaian axe [adze] was exclusively associated with ‘Tane, the royal-visaged.’ This god was widely venerated over the Pacific; in Mangaia he was especially the drum-god and the axe-god; he presided over the erotic dance as well as over the war dance ... it is evident that the drum was not only associated with a Tane cult in the erotic dance, but was regarded as Tane’s embodiment; when the drum was beaten, it was Tane that was struck, and from the fissure in the drum it was Tane’s voice that issued.” Dr. March quotes a number of extracts from early voyagers, etc., descriptive of various Polynesian drums, and he comes to the conclusion that the upright drums, which were hollowed out of a single piece of wood, were originally derived from bamboo instruments. He figures a drum (Fig. [47]) said to have come from Java, which, with the exception of the terminal head, corresponds closely with the drum called naffa which Captain Cook describes at Tonga. He concludes that after the drum “had passed from bamboo to wood, the horizontal instrument assumed the erect form, more appropriate to the god, and was then surmounted, as in the so-called Javan example, by Tane’s head, which subsequently gave place to Tane’s adze. As the cult differentiated, the symbolism differentiated too.” Without going into further detail, in the short thick form of the Mangaian adze, such as Fig. [46], the upper portion of the handle is usually cylindrical. The lower portion is usually quadrangular, or may be polygonal, and looks as if it might be a pedestal for the former. According to Dr. March’s interpretation, the stone implement represents the head of Tane; the upper cylindrical part of the handle is his neck. The lower part of the handle is an artistic analogue of the sacred drum; “the useless transverse closings represent the original bamboo joints, as well as the solid ends of the wooden drum. In spite of the fact that their presence increased the difficulty of hollowing out the shaft, they were reproduced in obedience to a well-recognised law. The square and oblong rectangular openings have an analogous explanation. They indicate the original aperture, whether the slit in the bamboo, or the single or double chink in the wooden drum which was excavated through the drum in order to secure its resonance. The great increase in the number of apertures, helped by rectangular designs on horizontal instruments, took place as an evolution of ornament that largely consists in a multiplication of functionless details.”

It is possible that the adzes from the Hervey Islands, with long, unperforated carved handles, may have a different history from the form illustrated in Fig. [46]; they may merely be decorated but useless adze handles. In any case, the above-quoted conclusions of Dr. Stolpe may be accepted.

In the three examples of the metamorphosis of a practical object into an unpractical one just recorded, we have an illustration of the effects of three dominant human forces on these several implements, art, display or wealth, and religion. The result is practically the same in all cases, but the motive leading to it is different. Analogous modifications are everywhere to be met with.

2. Transference of Fastenings.

One of the earliest handicrafts was to fasten two things together. To quote from Dr. H. Colley March,[25] “As soon as man began to make things, to fasten a handle to a stone implement, to construct a wattled roof, to weave a mat, skeuomorphs became an inseparable part of his brain, and ultimately occasioned a mental craving or expectancy.”