Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

INDIAN ROCK-PICTURES 487
stone which the Uaupes Indian wears suspended
from his neck, will understand that time is no object
to an Indian. I can fancy I see the young men
and women sitting in the cool of the morning and
evening, but especially in the moonlight nights, and
amusing themselves by scratching on the rock any
of the moment. A
figure suggested by the caprice
figure once sketched, any one, even a child, might
aid in deepening the outlines.
are often much in the style of
Indeed, the designs
certainly not at all
superior to those which a child of five years old
in a village school in England will draw for you
on its slate ; and the modern inhabitants of the
Casiquiari, Guainia, etc., paint the walls of their
houses with various coloured earths in far more
artistic designs.
Having carefully examined a good
deal of the
so-called picture-writing, I am bound to come to
the conclusion that it was executed^by the ancestors
of Indians who at this day inhabit the region where
it is found ;
that their utensils, mode of life, etc.,
were similar to those still in use ;
and
that their
degree of civilisation was certainly not greater
probably less than that of their existing descendants.
The execution of the figures may have
ranged through several centuries, a period which
in the existence of a savage people is but a year in
that of the highly-civilised nations of modern Europe.
In vain shall we seek any chronological information
from the Indian, who never knows his own age,
rarely that of his youngest child, and who refers
all that happened before his own birth to a vague
antiquity, wherein there are no dates and rarely any
epochs to mark the sequence of events.