Cultivated plants and domestic animals in their migration from Asia to Europe / by Victor Hehn ; edited by James Steven Stallybrass.
- Victor Hehn
- Date:
- 1891
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Cultivated plants and domestic animals in their migration from Asia to Europe / by Victor Hehn ; edited by James Steven Stallybrass. Source: Wellcome Collection.
441/530 page 441
![Scythian, or, according to Theophrastus, by Hyperbios the Corinthian (Schol. to Pind. 01. 13, 27). As Corinth was a chief seat of Phoe- nician culture, there may be in the latter statement a hint as to the Origin of the potter’s art among the Greeks ; but the report, like almost everything in the Greek writings “ concerning inventions,” has very little historical value. The tyrant Kritias praises Kepapog (pottery), the son of wheel and earth and kiln, as an invention of his native city Athens (Fragm. 1, 12, Bergk. : tov ds rpoxov yabig re Kcip'ivov r ticyovov evoev} KXui'OTCirov Kcpcipov, xpi'iaipov oiKOvopov, 1) to kci\6i' Mapadujvi Karaorpcm^a Tpoiraiov). There was also an Attic demos, YLipaptig, whose members sacrificed to the hero Keramos. As earthen vessels, the burnt and the unburnt, those made by hand and those turned on the potter’s wheel, are dis- tinguishable at the first glance, we must on this point refer our readers to the antiquarian excavators. The testimony of ancient languages seems to point to the practice of Weaving having existed before the separation and migration of the nations ; Greek hyphaino and our weave, Latin texere and Slav, tiikati, etc. If we were only certain that these words meant in primitive times the twistings of thread on the spindle, and real weaving on looms, and not merely a skilful knitting, plaiting, or sewing ! In plaiting mats out of the bast of lime-trees, with long and cross strips, a bone needle, to which the cross-strip was fastened, or a hollow bone through which it ran, etc., expressions might exist which were easily transferred to the warp, woof, shuttle, etc., when invented at a later period. Even now, in distant corners of Europe inhabited by a conservative people, weaving is carried on after the fashion of this primitive plaiting or knitting. It was witnessed by C. J. Graba in 1828 among the inhabitants of the Faroe Isles, and lately by Franz Maurer among the Bosnians, Reise durch Bosnien, p. 266: “They weave by hand without a shuttle, the cross-thread being passed through those that are stretched parallel by means of a long wooden needle, and then pressed home with a stick.” Whoever is tempted to ascribe the knowledge of weaving to the primitive nations should remember that this ai'tpassed from very rude beginnings through a number of stages up to its perfection in historical times. How naturally does a modern loom, a flying shuttle, insinuate itself into the fancy of the comparative philologist ! For the rest, the Greek and the Latin words for the spindle, the loom, and the operations performed by them, are very dissimilar. On the one hand : arpcacTog, p\aKa.Ti], k\w9oj, i/rpiov, ravuv, pirog (Horn. II. 23, 760 :](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24874309_0441.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
