The bow and arrow was the greatest of all human inventions—greatest in that it marked man’s first step in mechanics, greatest in adaptation of means to the end, and as an invented machine it manifested in the most practical and marked manner the intellectual and reasoning power of man and his superiority over the brute creation. It, more than any other weapon, demonstrated the triumph of man over the brute, recognizing the limitations of human physical capacity in contests with the brute. With this machine, man first successfully made up for his deficiency in his contests with his enemies and the capture of his game. It is useless to ask anything of history about the beginnings of the bow and arrow; wherever history appears it records the prior existence, the almost universal presence, and the perfected use of the bow and arrow as a weapon. Yet this machine, so strange and curious, of such intricacy of manufacture and difficulty of successful performance, had with all its similarities and likenesses extended in prehistoric times almost throughout the then inhabited globe. It is useless to specify the time, for the bow and arrow existed earlier than any time of which we know; it is useless for us to specify places, for it was in use throughout the world wherever the world was occupied by neolithic man.
Imitative creature as was man, and slow and painful as were his steps in progress and in invention during his infancy on earth, when he knew nothing and had everything yet to learn, it is sufficiently wonderful that he should have invented the bow and arrow as a projectile machine for his weapons; but it becomes doubly and trebly improbable that he should have made duplicate and independent inventions thereof in the different hemispheres. If we are to suppose this, why should we be restricted to a separate invention for each hemisphere, and why may we not suppose that he made a separate invention for each country or each distant tribe within the hemisphere? Yet we are met with the astonishing but, nevertheless, true proposition that throughout the entire world the bow and arrow existed in the early times mentioned, and was substantially the same machine, made in the same way, and serving the same purpose.
CONCLUSION.
The argument in this paper on the migration of arts or symbols, and with them of peoples in prehistoric times, is not intended to be exhaustive. At best it is only suggestive.
There is no direct evidence available by which the migration of symbols, arts, or peoples in prehistoric times can be proved, because the events are beyond the pale of history. Therefore we are, everybody is, driven to the secondary evidence of the similarity of conditions and products, and we can only subject them to our reason and at last determine the truth from the probabilities. In proportion as the probabilities of migration increase, it more nearly becomes a demonstrated fact. It appears to the author that the probabilities of the migration of the Swastika to America from the Old World is infinitely greater than that it was an independent invention.
The Swastika is found in America in such widely separated places, among such different civilizations, as much separated by time as by space, that if we have to depend on the theory of separate inventions to explain its introduction into America we must also depend upon the same theory for its introduction into the widely separated parts of America. The Swastika of the ancient mound builders of Ohio and Tennessee is similar in every respect, except material, to that of the modern Navajo and Pueblo Indian. Yet the Swastikas of Mississippi and Tennessee belong to the oldest civilization we know in America, while the Navajo and Pueblo Swastikas were made by men still living. A consideration of the conditions bring out these two curious facts: (1) That the Swastika had an existence in America prior to any historic knowledge we have of communication between the two hemispheres; but (2) we find it continued in America and used at the present day, while the knowledge of it has long since died out in Europe.
The author is not unaware of the new theories concerning the parallelism of human development by which it is contended that absolute uniformity of man’s thoughts and actions, aims and methods, is produced when he is in the same degree of development, no matter in what country or in what epoch he lives. This theory has been pushed until it has been said, nothing but geographical environment seems to modify the monotonous sameness of man’s creations. The author does not accept this theory, yet he does not here controvert it. It may be true to a certain extent, but it surely has its limitations, and it is only applicable under special conditions. As a general proposition, it might apply to races and peoples but not to individuals. If it builds on the hereditary human instincts, it does not take into account the will, energy, and reasoning powers of man. Most of all, it leaves out the egoism of man and his selfish desire for power, improvement, and happiness, and all their effects, through the individual, on human progress. In the author’s opinion the progress of peoples through consecutive stages of civilization is entirely compatible with his belief that knowledge of specific objects, the uses of material things, the performance of certain rites, the playing of certain games, the possession of certain myths and traditions, and the carrying on of certain industries, passed from one country to another by migration of their peoples, or by contact or communication between them; and that the knowledge, by separate peoples, of the same things, within reasonable bounds of similarity of action and purpose, and with corresponding difficulty of performance, may well be treated as evidence of such migration, contact, or communication. Sir John Lubbock expresses the author’s belief when he says,[315] “There can be no doubt but that man originally crept over the earth’s surface, little by little, year by year, just, for instance, as the weeds of Europe are now gradually but surely creeping over the surface of Australia.” The word migration has been used by the author in any sense that permitted the people, or any number thereof, to pass from one country to another country, or from one section of a country to another section of the same country, by any means or in any numbers as they pleased or could.
The theory (in opposition to the foregoing) is growing in the United States that any similarity of culture between the two hemispheres is held to be proof of migration of peoples. It appears to the author that these schools both run to excess in propagating their respective theories, and that the true condition of affairs lies midway between them. That is to say, there was certain communication between the two hemispheres, as indicated by the similarities in culture and industry, the objects of which could scarcely have been the result of independent invention; while there are too many dissimilar arts, habits, customs, and modes of life belonging to one hemisphere only, not common to both, to permit us to say there was continuous communication between them. These dissimilarities were inventions of each hemisphere independent of the other.
An illustration of the migration to America is the culture of Greece. We know that Greek art and architecture enter into and form an important part of the culture of Americans of the present day; yet the people of America are not Greek, nor do they possess any considerable share of Greek culture or civilization. They have none of the blood of the Greeks, nor their physical traits, nor their manners, habits, customs, dress, religion, nor, indeed, anything except their sculpture and architecture. Now, there was undoubtedly communication between the two countries in so far as pertains to art and architecture; but it is equally true that there has been no migration of the other elements of civilization mentioned.