Abstract

Table of Contents

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V


    

Vol.1: Noah's Three Sons: Human History in Three Dimensions

Chapter 1. Conquest of Environments
Chapter 2. Achievements of Primitive Societies
Chapter 3. Achievements of Ancient High Civilizations

 

Publishing History:
1960  Doorway paper No. 43, published privately by Arthur C. Custance
1975  Part IV in Noah's Three Sons: Human History in Three Dimensions, vol.1 in The Doorway Papers Series,
1997  Arthur Custance Online Library (html)
2001  2nd Online Edition (corrections, design revisions)

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     IF YOU enjoy reading catalogues now and then, you will probably enjoy this Paper, although it is dull indeed if read merely as literature. But if treated as intended, namely, as a list of technical achievements, it may come as a surprise to find how many, how varied, and how fundamental have been the inventions of Hamitic people, and how great a service they have rendered to mankind in the field of technology.
     Hitherto our ethnocentrism in the writing of history has obscured this fact, but we now have a sufficient and ever-growing body of documented materials to justify this presentation.
     Some of these achievements may be considered slight by those who have never actually contributed anything new to the sum total of human invention. But one should not be deceived by simplicity: it may be the hallmark of genius. It could also be argued that if we can only point to one invention of note in some particular tribe, that people can hardly be termed inventive. However, if we have only mentioned one invention that does not mean it was their sole achievement. It was mentioned only because it illustrated a particular aspect of native ingenuity.
     Scarcely an anthropologist can be found who would not at once agree that even the most primitive of people are peculiarly ingenious in finding practical solutions to practical problems. That they do not invent more is merely because they do not see the need for more inventions. When needs arise their solutions tend to be uncannily effective and simple.
     What may be said with a fair degree of certainty is that up until the time when Indo-Europeans, i.e., Japhethites, began to make extensive contacts with other cultures, Western man's technology was poor in the extreme. We have been great borrowers, and somewhat tardy in acknowledging the debt. Some of the reasons why this borrowed technology has been advanced in such an extraordinary way are considered in Part V.

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     I BELIEVE THAT it was Luther who complained that his opponents demanded in the very first paragraph a full explanation of everything he was about to discuss, before they would allow him to proceed any further! I find myself in somewhat the same position.
     This Doorway Paper is actually one in a series of four, the first entitled "The Part Played by Shem, Ham, and Japheth in Subsequent World History" (Part I). The other three play a supporting role and are very necessary for the validation of the thesis presented in the first one. Without reading them, it is likely that many informed readers will be continually aggravated because certain basic assumptions, essential to the argument, are set forth as if unquestionable, whereas in fact they require very careful substantiation. But, like Luther, one soon finds the opening paragraph cannot be written at all if it must answer all the objections raised against it before proceeding any further: no more can any one of these particular Doorway Papers.
     In the first of this series, a ''framework'' of history was predicated on the assumption that the present population of the world is to be wholly derived from the three sons of Noah � Shem, Ham, and Japheth. It was further hypothesized that the Indo-Europeans are Japhethites, which few will challenge; that the Semites are of Shem, which scarcely anyone will question; and that the coloured races (black, brown, "red," and yellow) are from Ham, which many will deny. But granted this premise, the pattern of the subsequent history of these three divisions of mankind is remarkably reflected in Scripture in a number of surprising ways, as suggested in Part I.
     In this paper my purpose is only to seek to substantiate a rather bold claim made for the descendants of Ham, namely, that

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as the inventors of almost everything basic to World Civilization (in its mechanical as distinct from its spiritual aspects), they have indeed been "servants of servants," servants par excellence.
     The people whose inventiveness is to be explored and illustrated quite extensively are all assumed to be neither Shemites nor Japhethites, and therefore descendants of Ham. This, in a word, includes all who are Negroid or Mongoloid, which comprehends, as a matter of fact, the founders of virtually all ancient civilizations in the Middle East, Africa, the Far East, and the New World, as well as presently existing or recently extinct primitive people. Hamites, it can be shown, have been in unexpected ways the world's great innovators, though very few people, except perhaps archaeologists, ethnologists, and cultural anthropologists, have been aware of it. The acknowledgment of our own debt to them is long overdue.
     The arts and architecture of such people have been recognized and admitted as remarkable enough, but their technology is commonly believed to have been of little account except for an occasional odd device like the compass. In due time, when it was discovered that Eskimos, a people who are generally held to be as nearly representative of paleolithic man as one could expect to find, could be trained to operate and even repair such delicate and complicated devices as sewing machines or clocks more readily and more rapidly than it was possible to train the "white man," considerable surprise was expressed. Eventually, the ingenuity of these so-called primitive people became increasingly apparent and writers began to vie with one another in their search for superlatives to enlarge upon their native ingenuity. But it soon became evident that the Eskimos were not the only "backward" people who were intensely practical. Their wilderness of ice and snow and their inhospitable environment is shared in a different way by other primitive people, whom it now turns out have proved themselves to be quite as ingenious in making the most of the immediately available resources of their surroundings. For example, there are tlle Indians of the Sonoran Desert in Southern Arizona. Considering their situation, it is quite amazing to find what they have succeeded in extractin, out of it. Throughout this discussion of primitive culture, and in much of the treatment of more highly complex civilizations of non-Western tradition, it is necessary to bear in mind that the greatest displays of ingenuity frequently appear in the

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exploitation of the immediate resources of the environment rather than the secondary or less immediate resources.
     This recognition of their resourcefulness, given somewhat belatedly, is now being accorded at high levels. Claude LeviStrauss, speaking officially for UNESCO, made the following admission in attempting to establish who has made the greatest contribution to the world's wealth: (1)

     If the criterion chosen had been the degree of ability to overcome even the most inhospitable geographical conditions, there can be scarcely any doubt that the Eskimo on the one hand and the Bedouin on the other, would carry off the palm.

     He might equally well have used the Indians of the Sonoran Desert in place of the Bedouin. And one could have included another rather rugged environment, the high altitudes of the Peruvian Andes, where the Aymara have shown themselves well able to hold their own with the Eskimo, the Bedouin, and the Indians of Arizona.
     Let us examine very briefly some of the achievements of such people. One of the best modern authorities of this aspect of Eskimo life is Dr. Erwin H. Ackerknecht who writes: (2)

     The Eskimo is one of the great triumphs of our species. He has succeeded in adapting himself to an environment which offers to man but the poorest chances of survival. . . .
      His technical solution of problems of the Arctic are so excellent that white settlers would have perished had they not adopted many elements of Eskimo technology.

     Frederick R. Wulsin, (3) an authority on clothing problems for cold climates, says candidly that "there seems to be no doubt that Eskimo clothing is the most efficient yet devised for extremely cold weather." Of this we have had personal experience, and can affirm its truth without hesitation. Moreover, to the Eskimo must probably go the credit for developing the first "tailored clothing" and, not unnaturally perhaps, the first thimbles. (4) In addressing a Scientific Defence Research Symposium in Ottawa in 1955, Dr. O. Solandt admitted frankly that:

1. Levi-Strauss, Claude, Race and History, The Race Question in Modern Science, UNESCO, Paris, 1952, p.27.
2. Ackerknecht, Erwin H., "The Eskimo's Fight Against Hunger and Cold," Ciba Symposia, vol.10, July-Aug. 1948, p.894.
3. Wulsin, Frederick R., "Adaptations to Climate Among Non-European Peoples," in The Psysiology' of Heat Regulation and the Science of Clothing, edited by L. H. Newburgh, Saunders, Philadelphia, 1949, p.26.
4. Jeffreys, C. W., A Picture Gallery of Canadian History, vol.1, Ryerson, Toronto, 1942, p.113.

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     The White Man has not introduced a single item of environmental protection in the Arctic which was not already being used by the natives, and his substitute products are not yet as effective as the native ones. Only in his means of production has he the edge.

     Ackerknecht continued subsequently: (5)

      A very short review of the Eskimo's hunting techniques has already revealed an extraordinary number of well conceived implements. Eskimos are described as very "gadget-minded" and are able to use and repair machinery such as motors and sewing machines vvith almost no instruction. It is impossible to give here a complete list of aboriginal Eskimo instruments the number of which and quality of which have been emphasized by all observers. . . .
     The best known type of Eskimo house is undoubtedly the dome-shaped snow-house with its ice window. With extraordinary ingenuity, the very products of the cold are used here as a protection against it.

     It might be thought that once the idea was conceived, the construction of such a house would be comparatively simple. Actually it is remarkably difficult to construct a dome, without any means of supporting the arch while in the process of completing it. As the wall rises, it converges upon itself. Each new block overhangs more and more until near the top they rest almost in a horizontal plane. The problem is to hold each block in place until the next one ties it in, and then to hold that one until it, too, is tied in place.
      Given enough hands the process is not so difficult, but the Eskimos have overcome the problem so effectively that one individual can, if he has to, erect his own igloo single-handed, without too much difficulty. The solution is to carry the rising layers of blocks in a spiral instead of in a series of horizontal levels. This is shown in Fig. 4. Thus as each block is added it not only rests on the lower level, but against the last block. One block would simply tend to fall in and, by experience, so do two or even three, when a new layer is started if the tiers are horizontally laid. But tle Eskimo method entirely overcomes tle problem.
     The solution is, of course, amazingly simple � once it is known. . . . Most solutions are, when someone has discovered them for us. The problem is to visualize the solution before it exists. We tend to assume we would discover the way quite quickly, but experience shows that this is not true. A. H. Sayce has put it so

5. Ackerknecht, E. H., "The Eskimo's Fight Against Hunger and Cold", Ciba Symposium, vol.10, July-Aug., 1948, p. 897.

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well, "One of the most significant lessons of Archaeoloy is that man is not essentiallv creative but destructive," and among ourselves at least "constructiveness belongs to the few." (6) H. M.Davies reminds us of this fact when he pointed out: (7)

     We drive an automobile because it is nearly foolproof, with little appreciation to the hidden, beautiful mechanisrn
that powers it, and with no conception of the creative thought that went into its development: meanwhile we demand the family airplane. We listen to a radio receiver whose operation is utter magic to us and demand the ever more complex television. We are a race of lever-twiddlers, button-pushers, ancl knob-twisters, enjoying the prodigious technical labours of a comparatively few men.

      And Sayce joins with Davies in the article which was quoted above: (8)

     As compared with the mass of markind, the number of those upon whom the continuance of civilization clepends is but small; let them be destroyed or rendered powerless, and the culture they represent will disappear.

     Returning to the Eskimo again, we have to realize that his environment offers him little in the way of raw materials, and his solutions must always seen simple by nature. It is all the rnore to his credit that he has achieved so much. Dr. Edward Weyer in an article ri,htly ertitled, "The Ingeniots Eskimo," put tle matter this way: (9)

     Take the Eskimo's most annoying enemy, the wolf, which preys on the caribou and wild reindeer that he needs for food. Because of its sharp eyesight and keen intelligence, it is extremely difficult to approach in hunting. Yet the Eskimo kills it with nothing more formidable than a piece of flexible whalebone.
     He sharpens the strip of whalebone at both ends and doubles it back, tying it with sinew. Then he covers it with a lump of fat, allows it to freeze, and throws it out where the wolf will get it. Swallowed at a gulp the frozen dainty melts in the wolf's stomach and the sharp whalebone springs open, piercing the wolf internally and killing it.
     When the Eskimo gets a walrus weighing more than a ton

6. Sayce, A. H., "Archaeology and Its Lessons," in Wonders of the Past, vol.1, edited by Sir John Hammerton, Putnam's Sons, London, 1924, p.10.
7. Davies, H. M., "Liberal Education and the Physical Sciences," Scientific Monthly, May, 1948, p.422.
8. Sayce, A. H., "Archaeology and Its Lesons" in Wonders of the Past, vol.1, edited by Sir John Hammerton, Putnams' Sons, London, 1924, p.11.
9. Weyer, Edward, "The Ingenious Eskimo," Natural History (Natural History Museum, New York), May, 1939, pp 278, 979.

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on the end of a harpoon line, he is faced with a major engineering problem: how to get it from the water on to the ice. Mechanical contrivances belong to a world in whose development the Eskimo has had no part. No implement ever devised by him had a wheel in it. Yet this does not prevent him from improvising a block and tackle that works without a pulley. He cuts slits in the hide of the walrus, and a U-shaped hole in the ice some distance away. Through these he threads a slippery rawhide line, once over and once again. He does not know the mechanical theory of the double pulley, but he does know that if he hauls at one end of the line, he will drag the walrus out of the water onto the ice.

     The deceiving thing about all his ingenuity is its very simplicity. He makes all kinds of hunting devices that are effective, inexpensive in time, easily repaired and uses only raw materials immediately available. His harpoon lines have floats of blown-up skins attached, so that the speared animal is forced to come to the surface if he dives. To prevent such aquatic animals from tearing off at high speed dragging the hunter and his kayak, he attaches baffles to the line which are like small parachutes that drag in the water. A bone hoop and a skin diaphragm stretched over it, some thongs, and this is all that he needs.
     To locate the seal's movements under the ice he has devised a stethoscope, which owes nothing to its modern Western counterpart, working on the same principle. (10) And recently a native "telephone" was discovered in use, made entirely from locally available materials, linking two igloos with a system of intercommunication, the effectiveness of which was demonstrated on the spot to the Hudson's Bay Agent, D. B. Marsh who discovered it. Marsh added at the end of his report this statement: (11)

     The most amazing thing of all was that no one in that camp had ever seen a telephone, though doubtless they had heard of them from their friends who from time to time visit Churchill.

      Nevertheless, it is exceedingly unlikely that any friends who had seen a telephone would have seen the kind of arrangment this Eskimo had developed which, of course, used no batteries. We used to make a similar kind of thing as children with string and ordinary cans, but they were never of very much use, and in any case we got the idea from someone else. In this case, the Eskimo

10. An illustration of such an instrument is given by Alexander Goldenweiser, Anthropology, Crofts, New York, 1937, p.85, fig.23.
11. Marsh, D. B., "Inventions Unlimited," in The Beaver (The Hudson's Bay Co.), Dec., 1943, p.40.

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had used fur around the diaphragm to cushion it, and the sound came through remarkably well.
     Finally, a word about Eskirno snow goggles. An illustration of one of these will be found in Fig. 5. They are well known to explorers and no one will travel in the Arctic without them � or something to replace them � if he wishes to escape the very unpleasant ailment of snow blindness. Like everything else the Eskimo makes, they are very effective, and often so designed that he does not need to turn his head to see to either side of him. This is important, since the game he usually hunts would catch the movement.
     Turning now to the Indians of the Sonoran Desert, Macy H. Lapham has written illuminatingly of their genius for making much of little. He said: (12)

     To the strangrer, these desert wilderness areas seem to have little to contribute to the subsistence of the native Indian. . . . Notwithstanding this forbidding aspect, to the initiated there is a veritable storehouse of the desert, from the widely scattered resources of which essentials in food, clothing, shelter, tools, cooking utensils, fuel, medicine, and articles of adornment or those sacred in ceremonial rites, have contributed for generations, and still are contributing to the needs of the Indian. . . .

     Lapham gives many excellent photographs in which various plants are identified and the products which the Indians have extracted from them are also listed. These lists are very impressive. He remarked:

     The desert ironwood, a small tree, is known for its extremely hard wood, is prized for the campfire, and has been used for arrow heads and implements. . . . The beans of the Mesquite are made into meal and baked as cakes. The split and shredded inner bark, along with similar materials from the willow and cotton wood, furnish the fibres and strands for building and for woven baskets. Some of these baskets are so finely woven that coated with gum and resins obtained from desert plants they may be used for liquids. . . .
     Condiments and seasonings for food, before the present era of the tin can, were obtained frorn native mints, peppergrass, sage and other herbs. Ashes of the salt bush which grows in saiine soils, were used as a substitute for baking powder. Other plant products containing sugar and mucilaginous substances yielded substitutes for candy and chewing gum. . . .
     Wild cotton was cultivated and harvested by the Indians before the White Man and his wool-bearing animals found

12 Lapham, Macy H., "The Desert Storehouse," Scientific Monthly, June, 1948, pp.451ff.

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their way into the desert. In his arts and crafts the Indian used gums and resins from the Mesquite and the creosote bush, as adhesives; awls made from the cactus spines and sharpened bone; and dyes from species of the indigo bush, mesquite, the fetid marigold, seeds of the sunflower, and from minerals.
     In the absence of the family drugstore, the Indian resorted to a range of desert plants for cures of various ailments. Somc of these were of doubtful value, but others are to be found on the shelf of the modern druggist. These remedies included materials for poultices and infusions, and decoctions of the manzanita, creosote bush, catnip, canaigre or wild rhubarb, verba santa or mountain balrn, berba mansa, the inner bark of the cotton wood, winter fat, golden aster, goldenrod, yarrow, horsebrush, and species of the sunflower. They were used for sore throats, coughs, respiratory diseases, boils, tootlhaches, fevers, sore eyes, headaches, and as tonics and emetics. Mullein leaves were smoked and used for medicinal purposes; while roots of the yucca, winter fat, and four o'clock, and leaves of the seepweed were used as laxatives and for burns and stomach ache. There was even an insecticide � a sweetened infusion of the leaves of the Haplophyton or cockroach plant which was used as a poison for mosquitos, cockroaches, flies and other pests.

      Even such random excerpts from Lapham's article might be sufficient indication of the "inventiveness" of these so-called primitive people. But there is much more to wonder at. A photograph of a Mesquite thicket in a river bed is accompanied by this observation: "Mesquite thickets supply fuel, poles, timbers for buildings and fences, and fibres and strands for baskets and binding materials. From the Mesquite's bark, seed pods, and bean-like seeds come food, browse for livestock, medicine, gums, dyes, and an alcoholic beverage."
     The roots of the Yucca trees supply drugs and a "soap substitute." Like the pioneer farmers, it seems that they used everything but the noise! He concluded:

     Thus, as the Indian made his rounds of this self-help commissary in an apparently empty wasteland, he found an impressive stock to be harvested and added to his market basket. We can only marvel at the wisdom and vast store of knowledge accumulated by these primitive people as they made the desert feed, clothe and shelter them.

     This is a long quotation. But it serves to indicate what ingenuity can do with an otherwise unpromising environment. It is difficult indeed to conceive of a more complete exploitation of the primary resources of the desert in which they have been content to live.
     One wonders if Lapham's use of the word "found" is really  

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just. They seem virtually to have exhausted their environment, extracting from it wisely, ingeniously, and effectively all it could possibly afford. Would we have "found" much of this? The point I should like to emphasize particularly here is that such people, for so long supposedly unimaginative and dull, have demonstrated a remarkable genius for this kind of thing. Their ingenuity has been overlooked so often because those who surveyed their works were themselves unaware of the effort required to invent anything. It all seems so obvious. Their solutions to mechanical problems in particular are always characterized by a peculiar simplicity that is completely deceiving.
     To digress for a moment, we may use as an illustration of this aspect of primitive technology, a method used by the Polynesians to bind the plank walls of their canoes. Anyone who has ever tried to bind two planks together edgewise so that they will be tight and rigid � and will remain so � will have quickly discovered how difficult it is. It is, in fact, almost impossible. Yet the Polynesian canoe builders do it easily. Fig. 6 shows how it was done. In a sense, it really takes an engineer to see the genius of this. By using gums and resins in the joint, a perfectly rigid, strong, and watertight union is effected. The solution seems obvious enough. Such ingenuity was exercised wherever their comparatively simple needs were not completely satisfied because of some mechanical obstacle.
     Perhaps one more such "simple" solution may be in order here. The Indians of North America used leather for clothing �- the familiar buckskin. However, one problem of all such materials is that after a while the edges begin to curl up or to roll in such a way as to be both unsightly and ill-fitting, and of course colder in winter. This was overcome by making a series of cuts into the edge and at right angles to it, each cut being about two inches long, and spaced about one-sixteenth of an inch to one-eighth of an inch apart. This imparted to the edges the familiar "frill" effect, which is both decorative and fundamentally useful. It required virtually nothing to do it � except ingenuity in the first phase. It prevents edge-curling entirely.
     Desert areas always seem to hold so little promise of survival to the sophisticated European. The very appearance of barrenness seems to hinder the processes of thought which would otherwise find how to render it more habitable. But it seems to have been no great problem to non-Indo-European people, whether ancient or modern.  

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     In his UNESCO paper, Levi-Strauss mentions the Bedouin along with the Eskimo, and archaeological exploration in the desert area of Transjordania has revealed a remarkable triumph of desert conquest by Bedouin peoples of early times.
     Michael Evenari and Dov Koller reported recently on the results of their work in Negev. They wrote: (13)

     The idea that anyone could have farmed a desert as arid as this is today, seemed so incredible that many authorities concluded the climate of the region must have been more lush in the time of the Nabataeans. Nelson Glueck went to Palestine in the 1930's and to Transjordania, to re-explore the Nabataean Culture, and what he found led him to acclaim the Nabatueans as "one of the most remarkable people that ever crossed the stage of history." Their cities did indeed bloom in the midst of a seemingly hopeless desert. Nowhere in all their houses was there a stick of wood to show that any trees had ever grown in the region. . . .

     The authors then explain how these ancient people achieved a greater mastery of the desert than any other people since, and they underline the fact that the Nabataeans "avoided the mistake" of trying methods which are universally accepted Indo-European ones, namely, the use of dams. Their method was cheaper, more effective, more readily controlled, and brought a greater area of desert land under successful cultivation. They so prospered, in fact, as to be able to build and support the very famous city of Petra. The authors then describe the method of irrigation these people employed. In summing up, they remarked � to quote their own words:

     The more one examines the Nabataeans' elaborate system the more impressed one must be with the precision and scope of their work. Engineers today find it difficult enough to measure and control the flow of water in a constantly flowing river, but the Nabatuean engineers had to make accurate flow estimates and devise control measures for torrents which rushed over the land only briefly for a few hours each year. They anticipated and solved every problem in a manner which we can hardly improve upon today. Some of their structures still baffle investigators.

     Records tell that the yield was often seven or eight times the sowing. The authors concluded:

     The Nabataeans' conquest of the desert remains a major challenge to our civilization. With all the technological and

13. Evenari, Michael, and Dov Koller, "Ancient Masters of the Desert," Scientific American, Apr., 1956, pp.39ff.

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scientific advances at our disposal, we must still turn to them for some lessons. . . . The best we can do today is no more than a modification of the astute and truly scientific methods worked out more than 2000 years ago by the Nabataean masters of the desert.

     Snowy waste or sandy desert, bitter cold or stifling heat � we have little to contribute to such people in the conquest of such environments.

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