Cowries Research Articles

Comment on E.M. McClelland's “The Experiment in Communal Living at Aiyetoro”

Dr. McClelland's account of the communal settlement of fishermen at Aiyetoro, with its moving tribute to “the strength of purpose” and “fortitude”of “simple uneducated men”, brings to mind some lines by the Nigerianpoet, Gabriel Okara, in which he attempts to show something of the religious force behindan older group of African Christians on the West African coast, members of what is now known generally as the “Aladura” movement, the praying people, with their emphasis on the Holy Spirit:They pray, the Aladuras prayto what only hearts can see while deadfisherman long dead with bones rollingnibbled clean by nibbling fishes, followfour dead cowries shining like starsinto deep sea where fishes sit in judgment;and living fishermen in dark hutssit round dim lights with Babalawothrowing their souls in four cowrieson sand, trying to see to-morrow.Still they pray, the Aladuras prayto what only hearts can see behindthe curling waves and the sea, the starsand the subduing unanimity of the skyand their white bones beneath the sand.And standing dead on dead sandsI felt my knees touch living sands -but the rushing wind killed the budding words.

Cowry Shells of World Seas, by Joyce Allan [Review

Cowry Shells of World Seas, by Joyce Allan [Review

Fem af Bahrains hundrede tusinde gravhøje

Fem af Bahrains hundrede tusinde gravhøje

Regional Information

M. D. W. Jeffreys writes: The following account was written by a man fluent in Zulu, and it describes a consultation he and others had with a Native witchdoctor or nganga some years ago. The account has several interesting features. One of these is the use of a cowry shell, a fertility symbol, to get into touch with his mother.

The Cowrie Shell Miao of Kweichow.

The Cowrie Shell Miao of Kweichow.

The Cross of Gold

This little book is introduced by a quotation from William Jennings Bryan attacking the Gold Standard but it turns out to be a plea for a restoration of a gold currency as the only kind of currency likely to maintain its value. Money is generally defined as anything—from cowrie shells to cigarettes—which is generally acceptable in settlement of debt and is not consumed but used as a medium of exchange and standard of value. The fact that gold has been used as money for thousands of years suggests that there is much to be said for its use; it is homogeneous, portable and, above all, though it may vary in value is not likely to vary very much or become valueless because the supply is limited. Paper money, on the other hand, is liable to be issued in excessive quantities, as happened in Germany after the Great War and in China, Hungary and other countries after the second world war, and to lose its value practically altogether. Even the pound, in spite of price subsidies, blocked sterling and other devices, is worth less than half what it was worth in 1930 and is likely to be worth still less, especially if people expect its value to decline further instead of recovering. The best way to maintain the value of the pound, says Mr Pepler, is to restore a gold currency; and he reinforces his argument about the solidity and intrinsic value of gold with analogies about the sun and moon, magnetism, eggs, anchors, keels and barnacles.

China's Muslim Minority

editorial note: The problems of minority groups in China, as elsewhere, are of increasing significance. NonChinese elements of Sinkiang Province were discussed by Eleanor Lattimore in the Far Eastern Survey of May 3, 1944 and April 11, 1945. In the issue of August 14, 1946 was published an article by Margaret Portia Mickey on the Cowrie Shell Miao of southwest China. In this issue is the first of three articles by Dr. Bodde on the Muslims of China proper. Dr. Bodde is Associate Professor of Chinese at the University of Pennsylvania. During the war he served with the Office of Strategic Services and the Office of War Information.

Archæology as a Science

THE antithesis between history and science as central disciplines in education for citizenship can be resolved by making history more archaeological and recognizing that archae is a science. Mr. Hansel's just complaint1 that the humanities specialize in inhumanity instruction in the accumulated evil, strife and intrigue of the ages does not apply to prehistory, which is exclusively archaeological-and archaeology does not stop short when written history begins. For archaeology, evil is not cumulative one might be tempted to say, is what is not cumulative. In the archaeological record (in a Mesopotamian tell, for example) the destruction wrought by strife is overshadowed by reconstruction. What archaeology reveals is precisely the progress of mankind of art, science and industry from the painted caves of mammoth-hunters not only to the early cities of Sumer and Crete but also right down to Manhattan and Magnitogorsk. Flint axes and rotary querns, the history of which is provided by archaeology alone, are just as much embodiments of science as the cyclotron. The cowrie shells from the Mediterranean adorning a Cro-Magnon skeleton in central France 30,000 years ago and the seals imported from India to Ur 4,500 years ago are just as reliable indexes of intercourse (and so of the pooling of ideas) as Board of Trade lists.

Cowrie Shells as Amulets in Europe

THERE have appeared in Man, of recent years, a number of contributions1 -articles or letters-concerned with the occult meanings attached to cowrie shells among a number of various peoples, and with the purposes which such shells, when employed as amulets, are presumed to serve. In those contributions it was observed, in respect of their significations, that because of the resemblance of their undersides to an image of the vulva they have been used to symbolize that organ, and because of some likeness of those undersides to the flesh about a half-closed human eye they have been used to represent eyes. Respecting the purposes for which they were carried by persons or animals, information and opinions varied between preservation against the supposedly injurious effects of evil eye (including therewith jealousy, envy, sorcery, and the like) and matters associated with the birth of children. With the world-wide uses of cowrie shells for amuletic purposes I have no intention of dealing here; the subject is one far too large for satisfactory handling, as a whole, in the present state of our knowledge. I purpose here to do little more than to set forth evidence seemingly indicating the probability that in Europe in general the cowrie served as a symbol, more or less recognized, of the vulva, and that its intended purposes included both the safeguarding of its carriers from the effects of evil eye and its analogues, and matters connected with the birth of children.

72. The Use of Cowries in Bastar State, India

72. The Use of Cowries in Bastar State, India

61. Cowrie and Baubo in Early Japan

61. Cowrie and Baubo in Early Japan

Derbyshire Caves Exhibition

ON behalf of the Derbyshire Caves Exploration Committee appointed by the British Association, Mr. Leslie Armstrong has excavated Pin Hole, a cave in Creswell Crags inhabited in Upper Palaeolithic times and exceptionally rich in prehistoric remains. A preliminary report was published in the Transactions of the Hunter Archaeological Society, 4, part 2, with av diagram showing the brick-earth, red above and yellow below, which underlay the present stalagmitic floor, with layers of slabs fallen from the roof marking periods of exceptional cold. The palaeolithic cultures ‘represented are Le Moustier and Aurignac, the latter persisting through the glaciation associated elsewhere with La Madeleine; and the fauna shows severe and temperate conditions alternating. There are chipped pebbles of quartzite, and flint implements of excellent workmanship, nearly all with white patina; also slight engravings on bone, a bone blade regarded as a bull-roarer, as well as a cowrie shell and piece of mother-of-pearl. Mr. Armstrong has also excavated Mother Grundy's Parlour in the same valley, and published an account in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 55, Jan.-June 1925, with eight pages of careful drawings of the stone implements mostly of Aurignac types, but with a micro -lithic industry in the uppermost layer, and chipped quartzite at the base. The cave-earth of the Parlour has large stones from the roof incorporated throughout, not at intervals, and shows the same difference in colour as Pin Hole. Engravings of animals on bone in the Aurignac style and the best of the finds from both sites are now exhibited in the Department of British and Mediaeval Antiquities at the British Museum, near the top of the main staircase, and will, by the kindness of Mr. Armstrong, remain there for the rest of the year.

Cowry shells in Anglo-Saxon graves

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Golden Cowry

Golden Cowry

Research Items

MUMMIFICATION IN AUSTRALIA AND AMERICA.—Mr. Warren K. Dawson has published in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 58, Pt. 1, a study of the characteristic features of mummification as practised in Australia and America, based partly upon the published evidence, and partly upon a personal examination of such of the actual mummies or their photographs as are available—the latter a point of importance, as it has enabled the author to meet the contention, maintained by many writers, that mummification in South America is a result of natural causes, as it undoubtedly was in the early period in Egypt. In Australia the object of mummification was to secure the preservation of the body until the prolonged ceremonies after death had been completed. Hence it was necessary that the body should be portable owing to the frequent moving of the camp. The body was, therefore, preserved in a position which was often unnatural, the thighs sometimes being so far bent that the knees were forced behind the shoulders. Certain features which are meaningless in their context point to an introduced ritual. Such, for example, is the practice of mummification even when the corpse was destined for cremation or other form of destruction; the pains taken to remove the epidermis, though the whole of the body was afterwards burnt; the laying of the body on a roof-covered platform; and the painting of the body with redochre and the attempt to give it a life-like appearance by painting the shrunken eyes. In Egypt by the twenty-first dynasty an artificial eye of white stone with black inlay had superseded various experimental methods. In the Torres Straits artificial eyes resembling those of Egypt, sometimes cowrie shells, were employed. The Australians, lacking the necessary skill, sometimes packed the eyelid with cotton, indicating the pupil by a pigment.

The Phœnician Vademecum

IT is gratifying to see (vol. vii. p. 351) that you express a doubt whether the Cowrie shells in the Pomeranian barrows must necessarily, as Wagner supposes, have been brought by the Phœnicians. Because the earliest Greek historians introduced the Phœnicians to us they have been employed as a universal machinery for carrying out all kinds of operations. This theory is in fact incompatible with our present knowledge of the duration of the human race, and, we may say, with the relative antiquity of the Phœnician epoch, which can date but little beyond the historic period. Thus we are led to neglect the evidences of skulls, weapons, tools, monuments, and languages, which show that there must have been communications between distant regions long before the rise of the Phœnicians. There are many prehistoric races which had a sufficiently wide distribution to provide for the dissemination of such a small object as the Cowrie. Among these may be named the dwarf or short races, of which the Mincopies of the Audamans are a type; the race now represented by the Agavs of the Nile, Avkhass of Caucasus (Achivi), and Omagua and Guarani of Brazil; and the Dravidian race. Populations which could distribute men over the continents and islands of Europe, Africa, Australia, and the Americas must have been capable of distributing cowries and beads without Phœnician intervention. At present the Phœnicians are blocking the road to prehistoric research, as the Hebrews formerly did.

Account of Pawpaw or Cowry Shells, Found in Dorchester

Account of Pawpaw or Cowry Shells, Found in Dorchester

XXI. Observations and experiments on a wax-like substance, resembling the Pé-la of the Chinese, collected at Madras by Dr. Anderson, and called by him white lac

I. Some Observations relative to the natural History of the insect which secretes a Sort of wax, called white Lac. The matter which is the subject of the following observations and experiments, was first noticed by Dr. Anderson of Madras, about the year 1786, in a letter to the governor and council of that place, when he says, nests of insects resembling small cowry shells were brought to him from the woods by the natives, who eat them with avidity. These supposed nests he shortly afterwards discovered to be the coverings of the females of an undescribed species of coccus; and having noticed, in the Abbé Grosier's Account of China, that the Chinese collect a kind of wax, much esteemed by them, under the name of Pé-la, from a coccus deposited for the purpose of breeding on certain shrubs, and managed exactly in the same manner as the Mexicans manage the cochineal insect, he followed the same process with his new insects, and shortly found means to propagate them with great facility on several of the trees and shrubs growing in his neighbourhood. On examining the substance, he observed in it a very considerable resemblance to bees wax; and noticed, moreover, that the animal which secretes it provides itself, by some means or other, with a small quantity of honey, resembling that produced by our bees; and he complains in one of his letters, that the children whom he employed to gather it were tempted by its sweetness to eat so much of what they collected, as to diminish materially the produce of his crop. It is also believed that the white lac possesses medicinal qualities.