The Evolution of Culture, and Other Essays

by Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers

Transition from Club to Shield (Africa).

In Africa, the development of the shield appears to have followed precisely the same course, commencing with the plain stick or club, Pl. XVI, fig. 170, and passing through the varieties represented in figs. 171, 172, and 173, which are scarcely distinguishable from the Australian ‘heileman’, to the oval shield of the Kaffirs, fig. 174, and of the Upper Nile, figs. 175 and 176, which are of ox hide, but show their origin by a stick passing down the centre and grasped in the hand; with this stick they parry and turn off the lances of the assailant precisely in the same manner that the Australian employs the projecting point at the end of his oval shield. Judging by the side views represented in the Egyptian and Assyrian sculptures, similar shields were used by the ancients, and we may especially notice the Assyrian shield, of small dimensions, fig. 178, mentioned by Mr. Rawlinson as being represented in the Assyrian sculptures, and having projecting spikes on the fore part, to catch and throw off the enemy’s weapons (Five Great Monarchies (1864), vol. ii. p. 51).

Development of the Shield.

All these antique shields have one other feature in common with the shields of existing aborigines, viz. that they are held by a handle in the centre. It was only in a more advanced age, when armies began to fall into serried ranks, that the broad shield was introduced and held upon the left arm, a mode of carrying it ill adapted to the requirements of the light-armed combatants. Besides the oval, the shield took other forms, but appears always to have been narrow in its earliest developments: fig. 176 from the Upper Nile closely resembles in outline fig. 177 from the New Hebrides. Livy describes the shields of the Gauls in the attack of Mount Olympus, B.C. 189, as being too narrow to defend them against the missiles of the Romans, and he also describes them as brandishing their shields in a peculiar manner practised in their original country.[181] This must without doubt have been connected with the operation of parrying. Sir Walter Scott describes the Scotch parrying with their shields. Shields in the form of a figure 8 are met with in various countries; Captain Grant describes the Unyamwezi as carrying a shield of this form.[182] Fig. 179 from this Institution is from Central Africa, of a very primitive form. Fig. 180 is of the same shape from New Guinea, and the beautiful bronze shield, fig. 181[183], of the late Celtic period, in the British Museum, found in the Thames, appears to be of an allied form. Fig. 182 is an ox-hide shield of the Basutos; it is allied to that of the Kaffirs, Fig. 174, by having a stick at the back, and the peculiar wings with which it is furnished connect it with that of the Fans of the Gaboon, on the West Coast, fig. 183, which latter is of elephant hide and has no stick at the back. No connexion that I am aware of is known to have existed between these remote tribes, which are of totally different races, but the forms of their shields here represented must, I think, have been derived from a common source.

Concluding Remarks.

It would be quite impossible within the space of a single lecture to produce more than a very small portion indeed of the evidence which is available in support of my arguments. If the principles which I have enunciated are sound, they must be applicable to the whole of the arts of mankind and to all time. If it can be proved that a single art, contrivance, custom, or institution, sprang into existence in violation of the law of continuity, and was not the offspring of some prior growth, it will disprove my theory. If in the whole face of nature there is undoubted evidence of any especial fiat of creation having operated capriciously, or in any other manner than by gradual evolution and development, my principles are false.

It would be a violation of the law of continuity, for example, if the principles which I am now advocating, in common with many others at the present time, opposed as they are to many preconceived notions, were suddenly to receive a general and widespread acceptance. This also, like other offsprings of the human mind, must be a work of development, and it will require time and the labours of many individuals to establish it as the truth, if truth it be.

Meanwhile it may be well that I should briefly sum up the several points which I have endeavoured to prove on the present occasion.

I have endeavoured to prove in the first place, though I must here repeat that I have produced only a very small portion of the evidence on the subject, that all the implements of the stone age are traceable by variation to a common form, and that form the earliest; that their improvement spread over a period so long as to witness the extinction of many wild breeds of animals; that it was so gradual as to require no effort of genius or of invention; and that it was identical in all parts of the world.