Anthropology

by Edward B. Tylor

Fig. 70.—Girl weaving. (From an Aztec picture.)

The next point is how people provided with thread or yarn taught themselves to weave it into cloth. As has just been said, cloth is a sort of matting made with threads, but as these cannot be held stiff like rushes, a number of them may be stretched in a frame to form a warp, and then the cross-thread or woof worked in and out with the fingers, or on a stick, as the Mexican girl is doing in [Fig. 70]. This toilsome method still suits the difficult patterns of the tapestry-weaver. But time-saving contrivances were invented very early. The ancient Egyptian pictures already show the alternate threads of the warp being lifted by cross-bars, so as to allow the woof-thread carried by a shuttle to be sent right across the piece of cloth at one throw. The looms of classic Greece and Rome were much the same, and little improvement was made in the machine during the middle ages. Indeed in out-of-the-way places such as the Hebrides, the tourist may still see the old cottage-loom which, except in being horizontal so that the weaver sits to it instead of standing, hardly differs from the loom at which Penelope may be imagined weaving the famous shroud that she undid at night. Only about a century ago improvement began again, when the “flying shuttle” was invented, which instead of being thrown by hand, was driven swiftly across by a pair of levers or artificial arms. Of late years this improved loom has passed into the power-loom, the steam-engine now doing the hard labour instead of the weaver’s hands and feet. The ingenious device of the Jacquard loom with its perforated cards arranging the threads, has made it possible to weave even landscapes and portraits.

The primitive tailor or “cutter” (tailleur) had not only to cut his skin or bark into shape, but to join pieces by means of sinew or thread. This art of sewing makes its appearance among savages, and is seen in its rudest form among the Fuegians who pierce their guanaco-skins with a pointed bone, push the thread through, and make a tie at each hole. Among tribes who have only such bone awls, or stiff thorns, to work with, sewing cannot get beyond the shoemaker’s fashion of first making a row of holes and then pushing and pulling the thread through. But bone needles with eyes are found in the reindeer-caves of France, so that possibly the seamstresses of the mammoth-period may already have known how to stitch and embroider their soft skins. When the metal-period began, bronze needles came into use such as are to be seen in museums, and in modern times the fine steel needles have become an example how finish and cheapness may be gained by division of labour, one set of workpeople being entirely occupied in grinding the points, another in drilling the eyes, and so on. But the sewing-needle is still in principle that of the ancient world, and hand-sewing, after holding its place for thousands of years, has suddenly had to compete with the work of the new sewing-machine, which runs its more rapid seams in a mechanically different way.

Next, as to the shape of garments. If we knew of no costume but what we commonly wear now, we might think it more a product of mere fancy than it really is. But on looking carefully at the dresses of various nations, it is seen that most garments are variations of a few principal kinds, each made for a particular purpose in clothing the body. The simplest and no doubt earliest garments are wraps wound or hung on the body, and by noticing how these are worn it may be guessed how they led to the later use of garments fitted to the wearer’s shape. To begin with the simplest mantles, a skin or blanket with a hole through the middle forms a ready-made garment of the poncho kind. When one throws a rug or blanket over one’s shoulders, it becomes a garment which requires fastening in front, or on one shoulder, to leave the arm free. This fastening may be done with a thorn or bone pin, the primitive brooch, that is, “skewer” (French broche); we now use the word brooch to mean the more civilized metal pin with a safety-clasp, the Latin fibula or “fixer.” Now if one stands thus draped in a blanket or sheet, one has only to raise the arms to show how naturally sleeves came to be made by sewing together under the arms. Next, putting the blanket over the head and holding it under the chin, it is seen how the part over the head will make a hood, which can be thrown back when not wanted. When it was found convenient to make the hood separate, there arose various kinds of head-covering, whose baggy shape often shows their origin, for instance the pointed “fool’s-cap.” When the mantle thrown over the shoulders is short, it forms the cape or cope; when long, it becomes the cloak, which owes its name to its likeness to a bell (French cloche). For convenience, many varieties of the mantle are cut into shape, as for instance the toga in which the ancient Roman draped himself was rounded off. But ever since the invention of weaving, certain garments have been worn just as they came from the loom, such as the Scotch plaid, and that ancient Eastern wrapper which we still know by its Persian name of shawl (shâl). Such woven garments are apt to keep a mark of their origin in the fringe, which in its original form is the ends of the warp-threads left on by the weaver, and when these threads are tied together in bundles they give rise to tassels. Another great group of garments are tunics, seen in a simple form in the chiton of ancient Greek female dress, which has been compared to a linen sack open at both ends, and was held up by a brooch on each shoulder, leaving openings for the arms. The tunic, closed at the shoulders and generally provided with sleeves, is the most universal of civilized garments, whether worn hanging loose like a shirt, or drawn in at the waist by a girdle or belt. In its various forms it is seen as the tunic of the Roman legionary and the “red shirt” of the Garibaldian volunteer, the coat of the mediæval noble, the smock-frock of the English peasant, the blouse of the French workman, and lastly, it led to our modern coats and waistcoats, which are tunics made to open in front and close with buttons. One of the great steps in personal cleanliness and therefore in culture made by our forefathers, was the adoption of a linen tunic next the skin, the “short” garment, or shirt. Again, a piece of cloth wrapped round the body and held up by a girdle forms the skirt or kilt, and the way in which Eastern women fasten their skirts together between the feet for convenience of walking, shows how trousers were invented. Many ancient nations wore trousers, as the Sarmatians, whose modern-looking costume may be seen on Trajan’s column, and the Gauls and Britons, so that it is a mistake to call the present Highland costume the “garb of old Gaul.” The classic Greeks and Romans looked on the braccæ or breeches as belonging to barbarism, but their opinion has not been accepted by the civilized world.

These remarks may lead readers to look attentively into books of costume, which indeed are full of curious illustrations of the way in which things are not invented outright by mere fancy, but come by gradual alterations of what was already there. To account for our present absurd “chimney-pot” hat, we must see how it came by successive changes from the conical Puritan hat and the slouched Stuart hat, and these again from earlier forms. The sense of the hat-band must be found in its once having been a real cord to draw in the mere round piece of felt which was the primitive hat; and to understand why our hat is covered with silk nap, it must be remembered that this is an imitation of the earlier beaver-fur hat, which would stand rain. Even the now useless seams and buttons on modern clothes (see [page 15]) are bits of past history.

This chapter may be concluded with an account of boats and ships. He who first, laying hold of a floating bough, found it would bear him up in the water, had made a beginning in navigation. Naturally, history has kept no record of the origin of such an art. Yet the rudest forms of floats, rafts, and boats, may still be seen in use among savages, and even the civilized traveller coming to a stream or lake may be glad to make shift with a log or a bundle of bulrushes to help him across, and carry his gun and clothes over dry. Comparing these rough-and-ready means with the contrivances made with skill and care for permanent use, a fair idea may be had of the stages through which the shipwrights’ art grew up.

The mere float comes lowest, as where a South Sea Island child goes into the water with an unhusked coco-nut to hold on by; or a Hottentot will swim his goats across the river, supporting his body by sprawling on one end of a drift-log of willow, which he calls his “wooden-horse.” Australians have been known to come out to our ships sitting astride logs pointed at the ends, and paddling with their hands, while native fishermen of California will sit on a bundle of rushes tied up in the shape of a sailor’s hammock. Rude as these are, they at any rate show that the makers have noticed the advantage which the craft with a sharp bow has over the blunt-ended log in getting through the water. In all quarters of the globe, men improve on the float by making it hollow for buoyancy; it thus becomes a boat. One way of doing this is to scoop out a log. Any one who happens to have been up country in America may have paddled himself in such a “dug-out” across a pond or river; and after experience of the care required to keep a cylinder from rolling over in the water, he will know how great an improvement it was in boat-building when a keel was put on to steady the craft. To savages with their stone hatchets, the hollowing out of a log is a laborious business when the wood is of a hard kind, and they are apt to use fire to help them, setting the tree-trunk alight along the proper line and hacking away the burning wood. Columbus was struck with the size of such vessels made by the natives of the West Indies, mentioning in his letters many canoes of solid wood, “multas scaphas solidi ligni,” some so large as to hold seventy to eighty rowers. The Spaniards adopted their Haitian name canoa, whence our canoe. Yet this dug-out, or monoxyle (“one-tree”), to use its Greek name, was well known in other barbaric countries, and had been common in Europe in ages before history, as may be seen by the specimens in museums, preserved by the peat or sand in which they were found imbedded. Even the Latin word scapha, used above, carries the record of this early boat-building; it is Greek skaphē, which corresponds so exactly in meaning to the term “dug-out,” as to be an evident relic of the time when boats were really scooped out of solid trunks; related to these words are English skiff and ship, so that the line of connexion in names runs through from first to last. Another very simple way of making a boat is that seen among the Australians, where a man will strip a sheet of bark off the stringy-bark tree, tie it together at the ends, and paddle off in this improvised bark-canoe. If, however, it is to be used more than once, he sews the ends together, and puts in stretchers or cross-pieces of wood to keep it in shape. Thus appears the bark-canoe, not unknown in Asia and Africa, and attaining in North America its greatest perfection, with its framework of cedar and sheathing of sheets of birch-bark sewed together with fibrous cedar-roots. Such canoes are still in full use in districts like the Hudson’s Bay territory, being well suited to a broken navigation where rapids make it needful to carry boat and cargo overland, or a “portage” has to be made from one river to another. The principle of skin-canoes is much the same, using hide for bark. North American Indians crossing rivers have been known to turn the skins of their tents into vessels by means of a few twigs to keep them stretched. Scarcely above this are the round skin-covered boats of boughs of Mesopotamia, and the portable coracles of the ancient Britons; on the Severn and the Shannon fishermen still go down to the river carrying on their backs their coracles, now made of tarred canvas on a frame, but modelled on the ancient type. The Esquimaux kayak has its framework of bone or drift-wood on which are stretched the seal-skins which convert it into a water-tight life-buoy, in which the skin-clad paddler can even turn over sideways and bring his boat up right on the other side. Our modern so-called canoes are imitations of this in wood.

Next, when the barbaric shipwright comes to improving a dug-out canoe by sewing or lacing on a strip of thin board as a gunwale, or making his whole boat by sewing thin boards together over the ribs, instead of skins or sheets of bark, he brings his vessel a stage nearer to our boats. From Africa across to the Malay Archipelago, such sewn ships used to be, and often still are, the ordinary native craft. The South Sea Island canoes, thus laced together with sinnet or coco-nut fibre braid so neatly that the joints hardly show, are marvels of barbaric carpentry. In the gulf of Oman, men used to go across to the coco-nut islands with their tools, cut down a few palms, make the wood into planks, sew these together with cord made from the bark, make sails of the leaves, load the new-made ships with the nuts, and set sail.

Before coming to the ships of civilized nations, let us look back for a moment to the ruder floats. Two or three logs fastened together form a raft, which though clumsy to move has the advantage of not upsetting, and carrying a heavy load. At the time of the discovery of Peru, the Spaniards were amazed to meet with a native raft out in the ocean, and with a sail set. The rafts which bring goods down the Euphrates and Tigris are buoyed with blown sheepskins; at the end of the voyage the raft is broken up and the wood sold, so that only the empty skins have to go back to serve another time. With still more perfect economy, the rafts down the Nile are buoyed with earthen pots for sale in the bazar, so that nothing goes back. Timber-rafts, like those on the Rhine, are well arranged for merely floating down stream. But when a raft has to be driven through the water by oars or sails, its resistance is excessive, and it has occurred to the Fijians and other islanders that a raft formed by two parallel logs united by cross-poles and carrying a raised platform, would go more easily. Looking at this simple contrivance, it has been reasonably thought that it led up to the invention of the outrigger canoe, known in ancient Europe, and now prevailing in the Pacific and as far as Ceylon. One of the two logs is now represented by the canoe, the second remaining as the outrigger log, fastened to the ends of the two projecting poles, so as to steady the whole in rough weather. Or indeed the two logs may both become canoes, and the platform be retained; thus we have the Polynesian double-canoe, whose principle has been lately turned to account in the double-steamboat to smooth the passage between Dover and Calais.

Next, as to the ways by which boats are propelled through the water. The origin of rowing is plainly shown by the Australian straddling his pointed log and paddling with his hands, or by the fisherman of the Upper Nile propelling with his feet the bundle of stalks he sits astride on. The primitive wooden paddle, imitating the form and doing the work of the flat hand or foot, is well known to savages, who mostly use the single paddle with a blade or shovel end; the double-ended paddle, such as our canoeists have borrowed from the Esquimaux, is a peculiar improved form. The paddle used free-handed to dig or sweep at the water, is best suited to the narrow bark-canoe or hollowed trunk, but for larger craft it is a rude contrivance as compared with the civilized oar, which is a lever pulled against a fulcrum so as to use more of the rower’s force, and in a steadier pull. The difference between barbaric and civilized knowledge of mechanical principles, is well seen by comparing a large South Sea Island canoe with twenty paddlers shovelling the water, to one of our eight-oared launches. Of sails, perhaps the simplest idea is to be seen in Catlin’s sketch of North American Indians standing up each in his canoe, holding up his blanket with outstretched arms with its lower end tied to his leg, and so going before the wind. The rudest regular sail used anywhere is a mat or cloth held up by two sticks as stays at the upper corners and made fast below, or supported by an upright pole and cross-piece, the primitive mast and yard. It is so common for the lower tribes of men never to sail their boats, that it is difficult to imagine that their ancestors ever knew how. Surely they would have kept it up, for the art of saving so much labour with so little pains would not easily have fallen out of mind. It seems more likely that the invention of the sailing vessel belongs to a period when civilization was far advanced. Yet this period was very ancient.