Conventionalism in the representation of the human figure has thus gone further than the mere inclusion of the cross or the rhomb motive, by working in with the original design a derivative or new pattern which fills up all the surrounding spaces.
By means of this system, a new element is introduced in the shape of symmetry. If a vertical line, drawn through the centre of the trunk, be taken as a median line in a simple design of the human figure, all subsequent patterns which are drawn will be grouped symmetrically about it. The most popular pattern used to fill up the available spaces with, is one of a “concentric” type. By this method a distinctive, bi-laterally symmetrical pattern is evolved, which after prolonged usage may actually take the place of the original, and have a true anthropomorphous significance.
Take the illustration of conventionalism of this kind shown on the carved pearl shell covering from King Sound reproduced in [Fig. 56]. The original motive was a simple line drawing of a human being after the style of the one on the left-hand side. The next stage in its evolution was brought about by blocking the areas between the limbs, and between the head and arm, on either side, respectively, in a manner which made the resulting pattern appear equally balanced in respect of a median longitudinal line running through the back and head of the original figure.
Very numerous designs of this nature are constantly met with in all tribal areas of Australia, but in most cases the stranger who is not aware of the intermediate or transitional stages may fail entirely to grasp their meaning or origin.
CHAPTER XXIX
STONE IMPLEMENTS
Survival of Stone Age in Australia—Stones used in their natural shape for throwing, pounding, cooking, and grinding purposes—Hand-mills—Rasps—Stone tomahawks—Scrapers—Operating knives—“Cores” or “nuclei”—Stone knives—Spokeshaves—Awls—Concave scrapers—Slate scrapers of Adelaide tribe—Scrapers embedded in resin—Adzes—Bladed spears and knives—Stone spear-heads—Method of manufacture described.
There are not many places left in the world where the man of the Stone Age can still be seen roaming the wilds of his inherited possessions. Even in Australia, although there remain one or two areas where comparatively little havoc has been wrought among the primitive institutions of the indigenous man, yet the influence of civilization is slowly, but very surely, encroaching indirectly upon his ancient cults by such means as inter-tribal barter, if not actually by the hand of the white intruder. Especially do these remarks apply to the manufacture and utilization of stone implements; it is, of course, only to be expected that the superiority of the metal blades of the white man’s implements would appeal to the native who formerly had to spend hours making a crude cutting edge which only too often broke when applied to the test for the first time. We shall, however, treat the subject regardless of the alterations which have been brought about by our appearance upon the scene, and without attempting to draw up a hard and fast scheme of classification.
At the present time, whilst there are not only some of the primitive men alive still, but also a limited number of observers who have had the good fortune of seeing them at work, it is of vastly greater importance to record the living facts than to write exhaustively, nay, even speculatively, upon the comparative shapes and embodied techniques of artefacts whose stony composition will ensure their keeping, even fossilized, long after the men who made them, and the scientists who lived among them, have passed into oblivion.
The Australian aboriginal makes adequate use of any suitably shaped pieces of stone he happens to find whilst in pursuit of game; both in the Musgrave Ranges and the northern Kimberleys stones are used in their natural shape for hurling into a flying flock of birds, for shying at a bounding wallaby, for bringing down nuts of the boabab, and for precipitating fledgelings out of a nest.