The Lack of a Spindle points the Same Way

(10) Another Polynesian art that is in the palaeolithic stage is the textile, as has been shown. It is one of the few regions of the world in which the art has not reached as far as the use of a spindle in making the threads for the cloth, the coast of British Columbia being another. In both these regions the thread is made by rolling the fibres with the hand on the thigh. All other neolithic peoples have or have had a spindle with a stone or pottery whorl to do the page 249twisting. We cannot imagine a people so intelligent as the Polynesians or the British Columbians abandoning its economy of time and trouble and going back to the primitive method. As far as the textile art remained household art it retained its palaeolithic atmosphere. Where it was connected with net-making or navigation it was masculine and sacred. And yet even here the spindle was not used for rolling the fibres; the simple primeval or natural method of hand and thigh was retained. The later immigrants must have left these arts at first to the conquered men, and, when their sons came to resume it, they accepted the primitive methods with it.