SCIENCE FROM AN EASY CHAIR.

Press, Volume L, Issue 15017, 11 July 1914, Page 9

SCIENCE FROM AN EASY CHAIR.

MORE ABOUT THE SWASTIKA. (By Sir Rat Lankzbtek, K.C.B . F.R.S.) (Special rights secured by "The Press.")

Tho Swastika is, as we have seen, a very early device or sjfrnbol in uso among' very ancient races in Europe, Asia, and America. Though it lias been found on an ingot of metal in Ashanti it was of lato foreign introduction there, and is not known in > Africa, nor in Polynesia and Australia, nor among the Eskimos. How did* it as a mere matter of shape and pattern eonio into existence ? One might suppose that such simple combinations of lines as the simple cross and this cross, with the arms bent each half-way along its length to form a. right angle. , would be very natural things for a primitive man—cr a child—to make when trying to produce some ornamental effect by tracing simple rectilinear and symmetric figures. No doubfc such a '•playing with lines" is a common phase or stage of tho human search for decorative design. It leads by gradual steps to very complex line-decoration in early pottery and woven work, which is sometimes called "geometrical design." ' It is, however, the fact, and a. very-' interesting one, that tho tendency to make geometrical design is not so pronounced in the very earliest examples of human drawing and ornament known to "as, as is the tendency to copy natural objects. And this would appear to be especially the case- where the drawing is to be a symbol or significant badge. In the earliest art work known to us—that of the cave-men of .the late Pleistocene period in Western Europo —the artists were busy with attempts (often wonderfully successful ones) to present the outlines of familiar animals (and sometimes plante)'by incised carving on bono or painting on the rock walls of caves—preceded, it is truo, by a period in which "all-round" sculpture in bone or stone or modelling in clay was the method employed. The use of lines—concentric or parallel, like those on the finger-tips —as decoration of stone work is not known un#l the later or Neolithic period. On some- of the incised bone drawings of the Paleolithic cave-men we find engraved, one or often two littlo diamond-shaped lozenges. They are seen in the cave-men , *) drawing of a stag figured on p. 381 of my "Science From an Easy' Chair: First Series" (Methuen). These lozenges are supposed to be the "signature" of tho artist, and, if so, are not only tno_ first examples of a geometrical rectilinear figure as ornament, but the earliest examples known of a badge or symbol.

'" When we compare .the simpler decorative designs made uso of by the less cultivated races of men, wo find that there are certain distinct and opposed tendencies tho predominance of which is ox importance in helping us to explain the origin of tne design. The tendency to make straight lines and rect-Tnear angles, ivhich we may call the "recfcfflnear - habit," is found in work executed on hard stone by a graving tool, and in work where square-cut stones, are set together or flat pieces of wood or straw are interlaced, and. tn coarser kinds of weaving, beadwoik, and" ba-ketwork. The. opposite tendency is found in work executed with a «■__!- and fluid paint, or even with a Saver on soft clay or bone, though the latter is often rectilinear and angular. ____

Tho contrast is well shown in. tho two renderings of one and . the _ same "pattern," shown in A and B of J'lg. 1. A is tlio rectilinear angular decorative design which is known as the "Greet key pattern," whilst the scroll below it is the "curvilinear" treatment of" the same subject. The first takes its rectilinear character from ft structure "oiiilt up of hard, blocklike pieces; the other is the flowing, easily moving line oT a brush laying on paint," or of a. style moving over clay or eoft wax. The" contrast is the samo as tnat of the,capital letters of the Roman alphabet, as used in piint, with "their equivalents in "copper-plate," cursive 'Tiandwriting."

"Another pair, oi tendencies opposed to each other which have much significance in the explanation of decorative design is the tendency to convert, the simple lines of an original design into a drawing representing some animal or plant shape. We call this the '*naiuralising ' tendency. A good example of it is'seen in Fig. 2. In A of that figure we see a circle divided into three cones by curved lines: this is a known desien. It is called a "trisfeelion" (meaning a three-legged fignre)-, or is more correctly termed a three-branched volute. Tho curves are converted into angles and straight lines in B and then the stiff rectilinear **!nsKelion" is subsequently developed Into three human legs, as shown in C Fig. 2. It is naturalised. Were tho change to nroceed in tho other way from the three human legs to the simple lines, we should have an example of the opposed tendency, namely, that of converting drawings of natural oba degenerative or reducing process—to the simplest lines representative of them. This tendency, which we cafr /•grammatising" (from gramma, ihe Greek for a line), is far commoner in early art than the jjsturalising tendoncv which sets in .when the artist is exufceranl. gelf-iconfident, and imaginatlve Tv" e s OO a '^t^ralising-* , tendency in tihe flamboyant and arabesque jleeorative work of the renascence, but JVis also found . among the happy Miuoan, or island folk who decorated, great, pots, and basins in rvnnis and Crete with forms suggested •iv birds, sea-creatures, and climbing ofanis, and worshipped the great mot Tier Mature as Aphrodite, tho seaborn goddess. The 'triancuiar island of Sicily

(called also Trinacria) had in ancient times (even as far back as 300 8.C.) the conjoined three legs (shown in Fig. 2, C) as its badge or armorial emblem. An ancient Greek vase found at Girgenti has this badge painted on it. -indent Lycia had a** triskelion formed by throt> conjoined cocks' heads stamped on its coins. Though it has no direct connexion with the Swastika, tho introduction of the "three legs" as the armorial emblem of tho Isle of Man is worth relating, as it is not known to most of those who aro familiar with the device, with its motto "Quocunque jeceris stabit" on tho copper pence minted for that island up to as lato a date as 1861, and current in Great Britain. King Alexander 111. of Scotland expelled tho Norse Vikings from the Isle of Man in A.D. 1266, and substituted for their armorial emblem in the island, which was a *_iip under full sail, tho three logs of Sicily. Frederick 1.1., _iii_r of Sicily, married Isabella, the daughter of Henry 111. of England. Alexander 111. of Scotland married Margaret, another daughter of Henry, mid "Henry's eon. Edmund the R-neh-f>ack, became King of Sicily, in succession to his brother-in-law Frederick. Alexander of Scotlaud was thus brother-in-law both of Frederick 11. and of Edmund, successive Kings of Sicily. It was in thus way that ho was led, when ho added tho isle of Man to his kingdom, to replace the former Norse emblem of the island by tho picturesque and striking device of that other island —Sicily—with which ho had so close a fair.ilv connexion.

The tendency for drawings of men and animals when used as decorative designs to degenerate, iv tho course of time and repetition, into moro and more simple lines, to become more and more "grainmatised" and simplified, till at last their origin is hardly recognisable, is both a very remarkable and a very usual thing. The process of ciogeii'.-iation, step by step, can often be traced, and curious- remnants of important parrs of the original drawing survive in the final simplified design. Tho paddles and other carvings of some of the South Sea Islanders -how very curious 4 "degenerations" of this kind. A carved human head with open mouth becomes by repeated copying and simplification a -mere crescent or hook, wnich is th© vastly enlarged mouth of tho original face. It alone survives,, and is of enormous -size, when all other feature- and detail have been abandoned. In some carvings of a face the tongue is .shown projecting as an indication of defiance. In course of simplification in successive reproductions the face becomes a mero curved surface with a large pointed piece -standing out irom it; it is the tongue. That one significant thing— suggesting defiance—alone persists. The study of this process in human' art covers a very wide field, including all races and all times. An excellent example is that given iv Fig. 3. It shows

the step by step "grammatising" of a favourite decorative drawing—that of an alligator, as painted by the Chiriqui Indian's of Panama on pottery. We start in Fig. 7, A with an alligator, already considerably "schematised" or conventionalised. Tho Indians could do better than that, but it served for pottery decoration. The figures B, C, D show three stages of further "gramraatisfng" of the design .(from different parts of tho surface of a pot till, in D, we get tho alligator reduced to a yoke-like line and a dot!

Familiar modern examples of this reduction of an animal figure to one or two lines, with mysterious-looking branches (representing limbs or horns), are seonin tho scattered devices on ordinary Turkey carpets. A comparison of .various examples of such carpets of different age and locality roveals the true nature of these queer-looking patterns as representations of animals! Anbther familiar instance of tho ''grammatising" of an animal form is that shown in Fig. 4, D, which is tbe common symbol in modern European art for a flying bird. Fig. 4 shows, however, somo more

important simplifications of animal form. The series marked E are a few examples from hundreds painted on the walls of caves in- Cantabria (Spain) by prehistoric men. Thoy start with a clearly recognisable figure of a man — many «uch, an inch or two high, occur on some parts of the cave-walls —-and then wo have all sorts of simplifications and deviations from the more naturalistic initial design, as shown by the rest of the series, ending in a T —a primitive symbol often arrived at by savage decorative artists in various parts of the world by reduction and "grammatising" of the human figure. Of course, the letters of many alphabets have been simplified in 'this way from original picture-like signs or pictcgraphs.

Tho drawings lettered-A', B, and C in Fig. 3 represent accurately figures scratched on the clay "spindle-whorls" (before baking) so abundant in the remains of the ancient cities on the hill of I Hissarlik (Troy), found by .Schliemann. These heiwy, bun-liko spindle-whorls have retained their use and shape since | Neolithic times (they are found in the Swiss lake-dwellings) to the present day. Similar whorls were made of modern porcelain, variously decorated, in Franc© in the last century and sold to the peasants for giving weight and rotatory stability to the spindle used in spinning, and are still.used wherever tho spindle survives, ris among the j Indians of Central America. A "gr-am-matised'' profile representation of a stork (Fig- 3, A) is ono of the designs on these Hissarlik spindle-whorls, and j so is the linear representation of a stag (Fig. 3, B). And.now we come back to tho Swastika. Tho four figures in a row marked C, Fig. 3, are a few <Sf the representations oP ''flying' storks on these same spindle-whorls. They aro of \-arious designs of simplification, and the last- but one on tho j right hand side is identical with a j Swastika! It must bo carefully re- J membored that these clay spindlewhorls from Hissarlik are very common- j Iv inscribed with undoubted well-shaped {swastikas, as shown in Fig. 3 of my j article of last Aveek. The Swastika, is J quite, a common and usual decorative lucky symbol in the household art of that locality. Hence it is not surprising that M. Salomon Reinach, of Paris, has suggested that the Swastika \ may have originated thus —by the "stylising" or "grammatising" of a favourite and sacred bird—the stork. Once thus suggested and drawn in the simple Swastika shape—it has (it would be supposed) become fixed, and made-as rectilinear and simple-as possible, and ac-_ cepted as an -emblem of good luck, irhieh lias been transmitted throughout the ancient world of Europe. Asia, and America. This theory has a plausible aspect, but I understand from i

M. Reinaeh that* he no longer attaches importance to it. I do not know what theory, if any, of tho origin of the Swastika* now commends itself to him, nor whether he thinks it has originated independently in several times and places, or holds that it has one common origin. I am inclined to favour the theory that the Swastika has been started by the copying of the form of a natural* object on the part of a primitive race of men, and that this form has lent itself to the invention of other badges and symbols besides that known as tho Swastika. ,1 will explain this in my -next article.