Re: Is the Swastika evidence of a common origin?
AccessGuru (accessguru@aol.com)
10 Jan 1997 00:16:44 GMT
Over the years I have given the swastika question a fair amount of
thought. I am a textile collector and the swastika is a common design.
Try as I might I see no great common origin of design with a starting
point and then diffusion to the world. What is a swastika but an L
design repeated 4 times. There is some thing inherent in human nature to
apply the laws of symmetry to design. As you can tell I am no great
scholar but stay with me on this. The swastika is one of the simplest
designs that reverse mirror images on both the horizontal and vertical
axis s. This becomes important when you realize that ancient weavers
needed simple designs once they got past one color plain weave. The
swastika is one of the simplest design since as you can see it is all
straight lines and is an obvious structure to any hand weaver. If there
were no swastikas in the world today by the end of the week 6 weavers and
designers would have spontaneously discovered it.
This has many parallels with the so called Mother goddess of Anatolia
controversy a few years ago. A discredited archeologist named James
Mellart who was thrown out of his digs by the Turkish government in a
scandal claimed that the digs that the Turks sealed contained proof that
today s kelim designs are actually covered with ancient Anatolian
religious designs. Oriental Rug Review which is available on the web had
a furious and sometimes vicious debate for ages over that. It is apparent
to me that the universal symbols that Mellart and his co-authors referred
to were dictated by the technical aspects of a color change in a slit
weave kelim weave. Now that after years the Turkish government has
reopened the site and there is no new evidence I have heard to Mellart s
argument.
Best wishes,
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