Primitive Pictographs and a Prae-Phoenician Script, from Crete and the Peloponnese

Abstract

In the absence of abiding monuments the fact has too generally been lost sight of, that throughout what is now the civilized European area there must once have existed systems of picture-writing such as still survive among the more primitive races of mankind. To find such ‘pictographs’ in actual use—the term is used in its most comprehensive sense to cover carvings on rocks or other materials whether or not actually overlaid with colour—we must now go further afield. Traces of such may indeed be seen on the rude engravings of some megalithic monuments like that of Gavr Innis, on the rock carvings of Denmark, or the mysterious figures known as the Maraviglie wrought on a limestone cliff in the heart of the Maritime Alps, to which may be added others quite recently discovered in the same region. In Lapland, where designs of this character ornamented the troll-drums of the magicians till within a recent period, survivals of some of the traditional forms may still be found to the present day, engraved on the bowls of their reindeer-horn spoons. Of actual rock-paintings perfectly analogous to those of Cherokees or Zulus, I have myself observed an example—consisting of animals and swastika-like figures painted probably by early Slavonic hands on the face of a rock over-hanging a sacred grotto in a fiord of the Bocche di Cattaro.