THE GENESIS OF THE SWORD. 



79 



THE GENESIS OF THE SWOED * 



THE idea of employing weapons for assault or defense was a logic- 

 al result of the first contests that took place between man and 

 man. In these contests the strongest man with his native weapons 

 his fists was unconsciously the father of all arms and all armed 

 strength, for his weaker antagonist would early seek to restore the 

 balance of power between them by the use of some sort of weapon. 

 The shorter-armed man lengthened his striking power by the use of a 

 stick, and found, after a time, the help its leverage and weight afforded 

 him. The first case in which the chance-selected, heavy-ended staff or 

 club showed that weight or hardness had its value, was a first step 

 toward furnishing it with a strong head. Hence the blow of the fist 

 was the forerunner of the crushing weapon. In the same way the 

 pointed stick became the lance or dagger ; and the thrown shaft, 

 helped, as knowledge increased, by the bow or " throwing-stick," was 

 the precursor of the dart and arrow. The character of the first 

 weapons was largely determined by the nature of the materials from 

 which they were derived, and their shape partly from this and partly 

 by copying the forms of the weapons possessed by the animals the 

 primitive men slew. Hence arises the general similarity in character 

 and shape of the earliest tools from all parts of the world. 



The weapons of animals are piercing, striking, serrated, poisoned 

 or missile ; and weapons made directly from those of some animals 

 were used for similar purposes. Spears and lances are found made 

 from the weapons of the walrus, boar, gnu, rhinoceros, sword-fish, nar- 

 whal, and antelope, to be used for piercing, as the animals themselves 

 used them. The serrated bone of the sting-ray furnished both the 

 material and example for many a South-Sea Island spear. The saw- 

 fish's snout has given the natives of New Guinea a ready-made weapon 

 (Fig. 2), and the setting of the shark's teeth in the jaw has suggested 

 their employment in making deadly the edge of a Tahiti sword (Fig. 

 39). The curved buffalo-horn and the wavy antelope-horn gave the 

 types of the Indian kandjar. (Fig. 1) and many other Eastern weapons. 

 The hollow poison-fang of the venomous serpent not only gave a 

 lesson to the- South American Indians, who use a poison-tipped spear, 

 but indirectly suggested holes for poison in the poisoned arrow-heads, 

 and grooves for the same purpose in the mediaeval stiletto. The 

 barbed arrow-head was suggested by the barbed sting of the insect, 

 which stays in the wound it makes ; and the Bushman may have 

 learned to half cut off his arrow close to the head, so that it should 

 break off in the wound, from observing how stings thus break off in 



* From a paper by C. Cooper King, of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, in Cas- 

 sell, Petter, Galpin & Co.'s " Science for All." 



