So early as the time of the cave-dwellers, there was a beginning of commerce. Traces have been found of workshops belonging to that period, where flint weapons and tools were made in such quantities as evidently to have been designed for purposes of barter, and the presence of amber and shells in places far from the coast, speaks of trading journeys. With bargains and exchange of commodities, aids to memory must surely have come in; and when we think of the men of the Neolithic age as traders, we can hardly be wrong in also believing them to have taken the next step in civilization which trade seems to bring with it--the invention of some system of mnemonics.
No man or woman would be likely to trust their bargaining to another without giving him some little token or pledge by way of safeguard against mistake or forgetfulness. It would be a very trifling, transitory thing at first; something in the nature of a tally, or a succession of knots or woven threads in a garment, allied to the knot which we tie on our handkerchief overnight to make us remember something in the morning. It seems hardly worthy of notice, and yet the invention of that artificial aid to memory is the germ of writing, the little seed from which such great things have come. Unfortunately, our discoveries of stone-age relics have not yet furnished us with any suggestion as to how the men of that epoch arranged and carried out the aids to memory they probably had; but we can trace the process of invention among still extant races.
Some tribes of Red Indians, for example, keep records on cords called wampum, by means of beads and knots. When an embassy is sent from one chieftain to another, the principal speaker carries one of these pieces of wampum, and from it reads off the articles of the proposed treaty, almost as easily as if it were from a note-book.
In the Eastern Archipelago, and in Polynesia proper, cord-records of the same kind were in use forty years ago, and by means of them the tax-gatherers in the island of Hawaii kept clear accounts of all articles collected from the inhabitants of the island. The revenue-book of Hawaii was a rope four hundred fathoms long, divided into portions corresponding to districts in the island, and each portion was under the care of a tax-gatherer, who by means of knots, loops, and tufts of different shapes, colours, and sizes, managed to keep an accurate account of the number of hogs, dogs, pieces of sandal-wood, etc., at which each inhabitant of his district was rated. The Chinese, again, have a legend that in very early times their people used little cords marked by knots of different sizes, instead of writing.