This is the third post of a series dedicated to the possibile prehistoric links between Polynesians and the Native Americans of Alaska and Britih Columbia, on the NW coast of North America.
My previous post mentioned a text published in 1894 on the similarities between both groups of people.
The first post was an introduction to the subject, mentioning some Hawaiian lore about an Alaskan origin, and online sources.
Beaten Bark
This post will look into a product known as "beaten bark", it is obtained by pounding tree bark (hence its name) into fiber which is then used either as a textile (barkcloth) or, as a product similar to paper. Beaten bark is found in China, Southeast Asia, Polynesia, and among some Native American groups in Mexico and NW North America. This suggests the possibilitiy of trans-pacific sharing of know-how in ancient times.
The tools: Bark beaters
Bark is processed by beating the tough fibers and breaking them apart, special tools known as "beaters" are used for this purpose.
An article published in 1900, by Frederick Starr (Mexican Paper, The American Antiquarian, Vol XXII Sept & Oct 1900, No. 5, p. 307) mentions a baton used to hammer bark to make paper. It compares the pre-Hispanic Mexican beater with the Polynesian tapa, notes that beaten bark was used to make cloth or paper in different parts of America. It also mentions the bark beater used by the Tinglit Indians of Alaska, and recognizing that they are also used in other places like "New Guinea and Africa they are usually quite different from these in sectional form and in the mode of grooving. Personally we are inclined to see a significance in the the similarity of the Polynesian - Tlingit - Mexican beaters. Were there no other evidence pointing to relationship or contact between the three populations the argument would be indeed weak; as it is, however this similarity presents evidence which reinforces an argument already made."
Below are some images from this article, comparing Mexican, Alaskan, and Polynesian beaters:
The Aztecs of Mexico beat Maguey (the plant said to give Fusang its name, also used to make paper!), for paper on which they wrote their symbols. They also used bark from different plants for this purpose. This paper was ceremonial.
This similarity in bark beaters was also noted more recently, and a post titled "Indigenous Bark Beaters in Coastal British Columbia" by Grant Keddie, 2024, (online here, with photographs), the similarity between Polynesian and British Columbian (B.C.) beaters is amazing. However, the author is cautious: "There is not enough information, at present, to indicate that bark beaters represent a transfer of an artifact type from Polynesia to the coast of B.C. If the latter were true, one might expect that they would be part of an assemblage of other kinds of artifacts that appeared near the same time. There are a number of candidates for the later that are in need of further examination."
Keddie then quotes Paul Tolstoy, who researched the matter extensively. Tolstoy's work, has a very revealing title:"Paper route: Were the Manufacture and Use of Bark Paper Introduced into Mesoamerica from Asia?" 1991, Natural History, vol. 100, no. 6, pp. 6-8, 10, 12-14. Below is Keddie's quote from Tolstoy:
" My own survey of hundreds of specimens of the club and racquet types [of bark beaters] shows further correspondences in the construction of Mesoamerican and Indonesian examples... My research also reveals a pattern of dates for the archaeological examples. In Mesoamerica, the earliest bark beaters are from the Maya area and its periphery, particularly the Pacific coastal plain of Guatemala and El Salvador, where they appear some 2,500 years ago.
The dating of artifacts from the islands of Southeast Asia is less secure, but both forms [of bark beaters, i.e. club-shaped, and racquet-type] almost certainly go back several hundred years earlier than they do in Mesoamerica. In Taiwan they probably go back one or two thousand years still earlier.
Surveying the manufacturing technologies of bark cloth and early true paper worldwide, I have identified some 300 variable features in the steps that go into producing these materials. They include such elements as the cultivation or care of trees used for their bark; ways of getting at the desired bast layer... [a long list of such features follows here]
In addition, I have recorded some 140 uses of the product, such as mats, blankets, bags, various items of clothing, shrouds, banners, and of course, writing paper. – Finally, there are some 100 specific details of the design of bark beaters, which may be combined in various ways, and a mass of relevant botanical and linguistic information.
Finally, the shared features and innovations suggest a family tree for these industries with a history of common inheritance and local differentiation. In it, Mesoamerican paper technology evolves from a prototype shared with Sulawesi bark cloth and moves toward the threshold of the true papermaking. Evidence from China suggests that this threshold was crossed sometime between 2,500 and 2,000 years ago, possibly in southern China or Indochina. Mesoamerica, however, acquired a version of the technology as it existed just prior to this event, probably from the area that includes Indochina, Taiwan, and the Philippine Islands, where the two beater forms occur together archaeologically."
I have seen several online posts mention that Max Uhle was the first to suggest a similarity between Sulawesi beaten bark (in those days the area was known as the Celebes), and Mayan beaten bark paper. The source given is his work in German: Kultur und Industrie südamerikanischer Völker: nach dem im Besitze des Museums für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig befindlichen Sammlungen, in 2 volumes. I wasn't able to find any mention by Uhler of beaten bark or the Celebes+Sulawesi. If you can find it, I'd appreciate it.
There is an excellent article about the Barkcloth production in Central Sulawesi (Lloraine V. Aragon. Expedition, Vol. 32, No. 1, p.33). And this gallery with descriptions shows sarongs, shirts, vests, hankys, headbands and paintings with dyed designs that are amazing even nowadays. One image is shown below
Tolstoy's books from 1991 and 1963 ("Cultural Parallels between Southeast Asia and Mesoamerica in the Manufacture of Bark Cloth." Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, Series II, Vol. 25, No. 6: 646–662. New York.) are behind paywalls, but those who have quoted him1 say that "Tolstoy (1963, 1991), who rejects any notion that the tapa of Polynesia provides a credible link between Southeast Asia and Mesoamerica, and he argues instead that bark-cloth technology was introduced into Mesoamerica, not island to island, but in a single voyage sailing north of Hawaii along an island-less route to Mesoamerica."
1Trans-oceanic transfer of bark-cloth technology from South China-Southeast Asia to Mesoamerica? Judith Cameron, 2008, in Islands of inquiry: colonisation, seafaring and the archaeology of maritime landscapes (Terra Australis 29). Editors, Geoffrey Clark, Foss Leach & Sue O'Connor, PublisherANU ePress, pp.203-210. Vol 1.
Independent, convergent discovery?
Judith Cameron suggests that the natives of Central America (Mesoamerica) developed the technique on their own, independently, and discovered details like groves on the beaters, on their own, below is her positiion1:
"Notwithstanding the above-mentioned parallels, there is also the possibility that the Meso-american archaeological bark-cloth beaters belong to an independent cultural tradition that has no links with Southeast China or Southeast Asia. Although the Southern Chinese and Southeast Asian beaters suggest interaction, parallels are neither necessarily nor exclusively resultant from interaction. An alternative explanation is that prehistoric groups in Mesoamerica independently developed stone bark-cloth beaters. In manufacturing material culture, there is a limited range of raw materials and there could be geological reasons, such as an abundance of river-smoothed pebbles of appropriate size and weight in both regions. The diagnostic features of the beaters in the typology might also be purely functional, rather than stylistic. Grooves on the faces of beaters enhance the maceration of bark fibres and prehistoric groups in Mesoamerica could have realised this quite independently. In the same way, prehistoric groups with hafted beaters on the two continents could have invented hafting independently, as groups in other parts of the world have done. "
To be continued
My next posts will look into the Mesoamerican amate (the Nahuatl name for barkcloth), and the work of the natives of British Columbia, who employed beaten red cedar bark to make mats and garments.
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025by Austin Whittall ©
No comments:
Post a Comment