QA299 - A geometrical drawing from the island of Malekula (Vanuatu)
Fig. 299 (p. 368) -This geometrical drawing from the island of Malekula (Vanuatu) shows the universal human need to produce (tetradic) signs to visualize something else, in this case the levwaa (stump of a banana). The numbers indicate the way in which the continuous line was drawn in the sand.
The anthropologist Bernard DEACON (1934) published a collection of geometrical drawings in the Royal Journal of Anthropology of Great Britain and Ireland. This article is still a monumental publication on the topic of doodling and the inner human need to create signs.
A correspondent of Deacon (miss Hardacre) told him that the lines were drawn ‘as pastime, chiefly by the young people when sitting about with nothing particular to do. They are traced with the finger in a nice moist patch of sand, well smoothed over, or in the dust, and are drawn on the frame work without removing the finger from the ground.’
Deacon’s collection remained incomplete, because he became a victim of cannibalism (kakae). The Ni-Vanuata – People of the Land – live over eighty islands and speak about hundred distinct traditional languages. Bislama functiones as the linking language between the indigenous vernacular and both English and French. For instance, the word for piano is: samting blong watman wtem blak mo waet tut, sipos yu kilim, hem I save krae arot, meaning ‘a whiteman’s thing with black and white teeth; if you strike it, it cries out.’ John Layard (1942) also gave examples of the sand drawings in his book ‘Stone Men of Malkula Vao’.
DEACON, A.Bernard (1934). Geometrical drawings from Malekula and other islands of the New Hebrides. Pp. 129 – 176 Pl. XIII in: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. Vol. LXIV (Jan – June 1934).
QA299 - A geometrical drawing from the island of Malekula (Vanuatu)
Fig. 299 (p. 368) -This geometrical drawing from the island of Malekula (Vanuatu) shows the universal human need to produce (tetradic) signs to visualize something else, in this case the levwaa (stump of a banana). The numbers indicate the way in which the continuous line was drawn in the sand.
The anthropologist Bernard DEACON (1934) published a collection of geometrical drawings in the Royal Journal of Anthropology of Great Britain and Ireland. This article is still a monumental publication on the topic of doodling and the inner human need to create signs.
A correspondent of Deacon (miss Hardacre) told him that the lines were drawn ‘as pastime, chiefly by the young people when sitting about with nothing particular to do. They are traced with the finger in a nice moist patch of sand, well smoothed over, or in the dust, and are drawn on the frame work without removing the finger from the ground.’
Deacon’s collection remained incomplete, because he became a victim of cannibalism (kakae). The Ni-Vanuata – People of the Land – live over eighty islands and speak about hundred distinct traditional languages. Bislama functiones as the linking language between the indigenous vernacular and both English and French. For instance, the word for piano is: samting blong watman wtem blak mo waet tut, sipos yu kilim, hem I save krae arot, meaning ‘a whiteman’s thing with black and white teeth; if you strike it, it cries out.’ John Layard (1942) also gave examples of the sand drawings in his book ‘Stone Men of Malkula Vao’.
DEACON, A.Bernard (1934). Geometrical drawings from Malekula and other islands of the New Hebrides. Pp. 129 – 176 Pl. XIII in: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. Vol. LXIV (Jan – June 1934).