United States or Iceland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
All the known savages of the world, even those which have scarcely the elements of picture-writing, call the constellations by the names of men and animals, and all tell 'ridiculous tales' to account for the names.
From the habitual use of this pictorial representation there grew up the but-slightly-modified practice of picture-writing a practice which was found still extant among North American peoples at the time they were discovered.
The case of the Thlinkeet man and the Iroquois maid is extremely unlikely to occur; but I give it as an example of the practical use among savages, of representative art. As an example of Red Indian picture-writing we publish a scroll from Kohl's book on the natives of North America.
These artists could paint what they saw. Yet they could paint up on the walls what they thought, too. There are likewise whole screeds of symbols waiting, perhaps waiting for ever, to be interpreted. The dots and lines and pothooks clearly belong to a system of picture-writing. Can we make out their meaning at all? Once in a way, perhaps.
The Sumerians had been the builders of the cities, the reclaimers of the marshy plain, the inventors of the picture-writing which developed into the cuneiform or wedge-shaped characters, and the pioneers of a culture which profoundly affected the whole of western Asia. The Semites entered upon the inheritance, adopting, modifying, and improving upon it.
They had learned to write their words with the use of this alphabet; and it would seem as if, in the course of a few generations, they must come to see how unnecessary was the cruder form of picture-writing which this alphabet would naturally supplant; but, in point of fact, they never did come to a realisation of this seemingly simple proposition.
That the piece of gold was found associated with picture-writing unquestionably belonging to the theocratic period lent additional color to this assumption. The sum of our conclusions, therefore, was that we had here the name-device of a priest-king who had ruled the Aztec tribe during some portion of the first migration.
But the other way is possible, the gulf between mind and mind may be bridged by something which has a right to the name of literature although it exacts no aid from the ear. The picture-writing of the Indians, the hieroglyphs of Egypt, may be cited as examples of literary meaning conveyed with no implicit help from the spoken word.
The great work of Lord Kingsborough, which contains a fac-simile of this curious document, reproduces also an ancient interpretation of the matters contained in it, evidently the work of a person who not only understood the interpretation of the Aztec picture-writings, but had access to some independent source of information, probably the more ample oral traditions, for the recalling of which the picture-writing appears only to have served as a sort of artificial memory.
I must observe that the hasty indications of the figure used in picture-writing are by no means to be regarded as measures of the Red Men's skill in art. They can draw much better than the artist who recorded the Manabozhian legend, when they please. In addition to picture-writing, Religion has fostered savage representative art.
Word Of The Day