For ordinary house-building, we now have recourse to the mason or bricklayer to build the walls, and tiles or slates are an improvement on the old thatch. But we so far keep to the old wooden architecture, that the floors and the timbering of the roof are still wood-work. For tombs and temples, however, built to last for ages, means were early wanted of roofing over spaces with the bricks or stones themselves without trusting to wooden beams. There are two modes of doing this, the false arch and the real arch, which are both ancient. The false arch is an arrangement which would occur to any builder, in fact it is what children make in building with wooden bricks, when they set them overlapping more and more till the top ones come near enough for one brick to cover the gap. Passages and chambers roofed in like this with projecting blocks of stone may be seen in the pyramids of Egypt, in ancient tombs of Greece and Italy, in the ruined palaces of Central America; and thus are built the domes of the Jain temples in India. It does not follow that the architects were ignorant of the real arch; they may have objected to it from its tendency to thrust the walls out. It is not known exactly how and when the arch was invented, but the idea might present itself even in roofing over doorways with rough stones. In the tombs of ancient Egypt real arches are to be seen, constructed in mud-bricks, or later in stone, by architects who quite understood the principle. Yet though the arch was known in what we call ancient times, it was not at once accepted by the world. It is remarkable that the Greek architects of the classic period never took to it. It was left to the Romans, who applied it with admirable skill, and from whose vaulted roofs, bridges, and domes, those of the mediæval and modern world are derived.
In thus looking over the architecture of the world, we see that its origins lie too far back for history to record its beginning and earliest progress. Still there is reason to believe that, in architecture as in other arts, man began with the simple and easy before he came on to the complex and difficult. There are many signs of stone architecture having grown out of an earlier wooden architecture. Thus on looking at the Lykian tombs in the entrance-hall of the British Museum, it will be seen that though they are of hewn stone, their forms are copied from wooden beams and joists, so that the mason shows by his very patterns that he has taken the place of an earlier carpenter. Even in the early stone-work of Egypt, traces of wooden forms are to be seen. In India there are stone buildings whose columns and architraves are not less plainly copied from wooden posts, and horizontal beams resting on them. It is possible that when men first took to setting up stone columns and supporting stone blocks upon them, this idea may have come into their minds from the wooden posts and beams they had been used to. But when it is said, as it often has been, that the porticos of Greek temples are copies in stone of older wooden structures, practical architects object that the Parthenon is not really like carpenter’s work. Indeed it is known that the Greeks did not invent their own column-architecture, but taking the idea of it from what they saw in Egypt and other countries, carried it out according to their own genius.
After dwellings, we come to examine clothing. It has first to be noticed that some low tribes, especially in the tropical forests of South America, have been found by travellers living quite naked. But even among the rudest of our race, and in hot districts where clothing is of least practical use, something is generally worn, either from ideas of decency or for ornament. Where little or no clothing is worn, it is common to paint the body. The Andaman islanders, who plaster themselves with a mixture of lard and coloured earth, have a practical reason for so doing, this coat of paint protecting their skin from heat and mosquitos; but they go off into love of display when they proceed to draw lines on the paint with their fingers, or when a dandy will colour one side of his face red, and the other olive-green, and make an ornamental border-line where the two colours meet down his chest and stomach. Among the relics of the ancient cave-men of Europe are hollowed stones, which were their primitive mortars for grinding the ochre and other colours for painting themselves. Indeed, few habits mark the lower stages of human life so well as the delight in body-patterns of bold spots and stripes in striking colours, familiar to us in pictures of Australians dancing at a corroboree, or Americans working themselves up to frenzy in the scalp-dance. The primitive sign of mourning also makes its appearance where savage mourners blacken (or whiten) themselves over. In the higher civilization, faded beauties may still make a poor attempt to revive youthful bloom with touches of red and white. But the ancient war-paint is now looked down on as a sign of utter barbarism; so much so that the ancient Britons, though a nation of considerable civilization, have been treated by many historians as mere savages because they kept up this rude practice, as Cæsar says, staining themselves blue with woad, and so being of horrider aspect in war. Among ourselves the guise which was so terrific in the Red Indian warrior has come down to make the circus-clown a pattern of folly. It is very likely that his paint-striped face may represent a fashion come down from the ancient times when paint was worn by the barbarians of Europe, much as in Japan actors paint their faces with bright streaks of red, doubtless keeping up what was once an ordinary decoration. When the skin is tattooed, the chief purpose of this is no doubt beauty, as where the New Zealander had himself covered with patterns of curved lines such as he would adorn his club or his canoe with; it was considered shameful for a woman not to have her mouth tattooed, for people would say with disgust “she has red lips.” Tattooing prevails as widely among the lower races of the world as painting, and the fashionable designs range from a few blue lines on the face or arms, up to the flower-patterns with which the skins of the Formosans are covered like damask. Where the art is carried to perfection as in Polynesia, the skin is punctured, and the charcoal-colour introduced, by tapping rows of little prickers. But a rougher mode is common, as in Australia or Africa, where gashes are made and wood-ashes rubbed in so that the wound heals in a knob or a ridge. Marks on the skin often serve other purposes than ornament, as in Africa, where a long scar on a man’s thigh may mean that he has done valiantly in battle, or the tribe or nation a negro belongs to may be indicated by his mark, for instance, a pair of long cuts down both cheeks, or a row of raised pimples down his forehead to the tip of his nose. Higher up in civilization, tattooing still lasts on, as where Arab women will slightly touch up their faces, arms, or ankles with the needle, and our sailors amuse themselves with having an anchor or a ship in full sail done with gunpowder on their arms, but in this last case the original purpose is lost, for the picture is hidden under the sleeve. Naturally, as clothing comes more and more to cover the body, the primitive skin-decorations cease, for what is the use of adorning oneself out of sight?
The head is frequently cropped or shaved close as a sign of mourning. Some tribes thus go bald always, like the Andaman islanders; or let the hair grow in tonsure-fashion in a ring round the shaved crown, like the Coroado (that is, “crowned”) Indians of Brazil; or wear a shaven head with a long scalp-lock or pigtail like the North American Indians, or the Manchus of Tartary, from whom the modern Chinese have adopted this habit. A curious mode of twisting the hair with strips of bark into hundreds of long thin ringlets is seen in the portraits of natives of Lepers’ Island, [Fig. 66].
Fig. 66.—Natives of Lepers’ Island (New Hebrides.)
Various tribes grind their front teeth to points, or cut them away in angular patterns, so that in Africa and elsewhere a man’s tribe is often known by the cut of his teeth. Long finger-nails are noticed even among ourselves as showing that the owner does no manual labour, and in China and neighbouring countries they are allowed to grow to a monstrous length as a symbol of nobility, ladies wearing silver cases to protect them, or at least as a pretence that they are there (see the portraits of Siamese actresses in royal dress, [Fig. 32]). Or the nails may be let to grow as a sign that the wearer leads a religious life, and does no worldly work, as in the accompanying figure of the hand of a Chinese ascetic, [Fig. 67].
As any nation’s idea of beauty is apt to be according to the type of their own race, they like to see their distinctive features exaggerated. Looking at a Hottentot face, [Fig. 12] c, one understands why the mothers would squeeze the babies’ snub noses yet further in, while in ancient times a little Persian prince would have a bold aquiline nose shaped for him, to come like [Fig. 11] b. In all quarters of the globe is found the custom of compressing infants’ heads by bandages and pads to make the little plastic skull grow to an approved shape. But as to what that shape ought to be, tastes differ extremely. In the Columbia River district, some Flathead tribes will so flatten out the forehead that their front faces look like a pear with the large end uppermost, while neighbouring tribes press in the upper part of the skull so that their faces look like the pear with the small end up. Hippokrates, the ancient physician, mentions the artificially deformed skulls of the Makrokephali or “long-heads” of the Black Sea district. The genuine Turkish skull is of the broad Tatar form, while the nations of Greece and Asia Minor have oval skulls, which gives the reason why at Constantinople it became the fashion to mould the babies’ skulls round, so that they grew up with the broad head of the conquering race. Relics of such barbarism linger on in the midst of civilization, and not long ago a French physician surprised the world by the fact that nurses in Normandy were still giving the children’s heads a sugar-loaf shape by bandages and a tight cap, while in Brittany they preferred to press it round. No doubt they are doing so to this day.
