Hawaiian Shells and Cowrie Currency
Money cowries (Cypraea moneta) are small mollusks that live in the tropical waters of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Their beautiful shells have been featured in ritual practices and incorporated into clothing and jewelry for thousands of years in African and South Asian cultures. Symbolically they were often associated with notions of womanhood, fertility, birth, and wealth. The Egyptians considered them to be magical agents and also used them as currency in foreign exchange transactions. Archaeologists have excavated millions of them in the tombs of the Pharaohs. In the thirteenth century, cowrie shells were brought to Africa from the Maldives in the Indian Ocean. They showed up in Egypt, then across the Sahara in the western Sudan region. Later, they were brought in by Dutch and English traders through the Guinea Coast ports of West Africa. The Europeans were astonished that the Africans preferred cowrie shells to gold coin.
Cowries were used in many other ways like bride wealth, payments for fines, divination, initiation into secret societies, and funerals. They were an important part of burial rituals in ancient China. When an emperor of China was buried, his mouth was stuffed with nine cowries. Feudal lords had seven, high officers five, and ordinary officers three. Common people generally had their mouths stuffed with rice, but if a commoner had some wealth, the last molar of each side of the mouth was supported by a small money cowry. This was to ensure that the dead had plenty to eat and spend in the afterlife.
Hawaiian Shells and Cowrie History
The cowrie shell has been used as money in more parts of the world than any other currency. As far back as the Shang dynasty (sixteenth-eleventh centuries BC) inscriptions talk of cowries. Archaeologists have found that the distribution of cowrie coincides with the gradual acquisition of territories by the noble lords of the Zhou dynasty (eleventh century – 221 BC). Cowrie shells were the most popular currency within Africa and pictures of cowrie’s shells also appear on cave walls of Paleolithic Africa. With the advent of the slave trade to the New World, cowries were among the items that Europeans exchanged with coastal West African groups for slaves. In the United States a money cowrie shell was found in excavations along Mulberry Row, the street of slave houses and craft shops adjacent to Thomas Jefferson’s mansion. The shell attests to the persistence of African cultural traditions at Monticello in the late 18th century. Throughout history cowrie shells have also been used for decoration, jewelry, and prestige.
The single Monticello cowrie appears to have been valued for reasons other than it’s potential monetary worth. The shell was found during the excavation of a subfloor pit or storage cellar beneath a building that Jefferson called ‘the Negro Quarter.’ The Negro Quarter was a slave house occupied from the early 1770’s to the mid 1790’s. A hole made in the back of the shell and two grooves, caused by the abrasions of a thread that passed through it, indicate that the shell was worn as jewelry or attached to clothing. It was probably transported to Virginia as adornment on clothing of a newly enslaved African. Historians cannot be sure of the precise significance the Monticello cowrie shell had for the person who wore it, but it provides tangible evidence that enslaved people carried some part of their African lives and identity with them across the Atlantic and onto the plantations of southeastern America.
Hawaiian Shells and Adornment
Shells have played a central role in religion from prehistoric times onward. Dominating early religious practices, cowrie shells had powerful female symbolism and was renewed in the religions of the great civilizations that followed. Various American Indian tribes believed possessing certain shells gave them spiritual power. Archaeologists uncovered a chief buried on a blanket made of 200,000 shell beads. Long before our modern day communication systems, man found that trumpets made from shells produced a sound that carried for many miles. By using as series of trumpet blasts, messengers were able to communicate fairly detailed messages from village to village, tribe to tribe.
All cultures have used shells and pearls for personal adornment. Cowries were worn by Cro-Magnon man, as indicated by cowrie ornaments found in their caves. Some cultures wore shells to signal their distinct tribal identities and display their role and rank within the tribe. In some parts of India, a Hindu woman’s equivalent of a wedding ring is a bracelet made of the sections of the Indian chank. Other ways shells have been used as adornment are as jewelry, pendants, earrings, finger rings, nose rings, bracelets, and buttons. Abalone shells, especially the famous Paua shell from New Zealand, were extremely popular for buttons. The freshwater mussels along the Mississippi River were used extensively to make ‘pearl buttons’ for many years. In the year 1912 there were 196 pearl button factories in 20 states along the Mississippi River system. As decoration or as intrinsic parts of their function mother of pearl was commonly used on ceremonial or religious garbs. As clothing adornment, pearls are frequently sewn on as jewelry, fresh and saltwater pearls are used in many ways as inserts in ceremonial masks.
Hawaiian Shells and Tools
From prehistoric times, man has used shells for tools and utensils. Household dishes, cooking pots, cutlery, scoops, spatulas were often made from bivalves and larger gastropods. Food pounders were made from the giant clam in the South Pacific. Storage containers for such things as perfumes, ointments and medicines were made from some of the larger bivalves and univalves such as the nautilus. Oil lamps made from shells are a frequent find throughout the Middle East. Fishing lures, octopus lures, hooks and sinkers were made from abalone, pearl shell and cowries. Tweezers, tongs and claspers were made from bivalves. Building tools designed to split and smooth many building and thatching materials such as palm fronds and bamboo canes. Farming tools, shovels, plow blades, hoes for tilling the soil, adze, knife, and axe blades were made from shells with sharpened edges. Blades and scrapers for cutting and skinning hides were made from shells such as the ark shell. Drills, chisels, scrapers, sanders were made from various shells such as the Red Helmet shell. Bailing buckets made from ‘bailer’ shells are still in use by native fisherman in the South Pacific and Australia today to bail out their boats.
In the 16th Century, natives of Central America dumped Purpura Patula snails into cauldrons and crushed them. The mashed snails oozed purple dye that could color cloth. By 1648, the natives had started producing this dye for export to Spain. Because of the high demand for the dye, they were forced to find ways to maintain their supply while not endangering the population of snails. By imposing conservation measures, they learned to pluck a snail off the rocks, gently blow into its shell and collect the dye that trickled out. The snail was then returned to the rocks unharmed. Central America wasn’t the only part of the world where clothes were dyed with mollusk juice. Mollusks in the Mediterranean were also used in this way. Antony and Cleopatra had sails that were colored ‘tyrian purple’. Rome’s emperor Nero was the only person in the empire allowed to wear cloth of this color.
Hawaiian Shells and Influence
Mollusks first made their appearance 500 million years ago, and their shells have played an important role in many cultures throughout the world. They have influenced man in art, architecture, trade, music, medicine, communication, and religion. They have been weighed, measured, sliced and cataloged by scientists. And archeologists have shown us how shells were used for containers, tools, ornaments, currency, and jewelry.
Shells were the earliest forms of currency used in many countries. The Chinese were the first people to use the cowrie shell as currency. Examples of other country’s native money-strands are found in New Guinea, the Melanesian islands, and Africa. The acceptance of this shell as a type of currency was so strong that the first oval metal coin minted in the Greek colony of Lydia around 670 B.C. was modeled after the cowrie. Hard clamshells and whelks were the shells used to make North American Indian wampum. Eastern Indians also used the tusk shell as a trade shell. Beads and other ornaments were traded all over the Andean region. Chumash Indians of California also made shell beads that they used as money. The name “Chumash” literally translates ‘bead money makers’.
Man has long been inspired by the graceful symmetry and beauty of shells. Archaeological diggings at many ancient sites have produced shells and artifacts in the design of shells. Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans used the shell’s shape as part of their building design and decor. Architecture has been profoundly influenced by the symmetry of molluscs, with the Guggenheim Museum being a classic example. Many great artists were so inspired by the beauty, diversity and design of the shell, that they incorporated them into their masterpieces.
Hawaiian Shells and Shape
The mantle helps in the formation of the shell’s external features, such as ribs, spines, and grooves. For some species, these features provide protection from predators, added strength, or assist in burrowing. Shells of creatures like the nautilus have complex internal structures, such as multiple chambers containing water and gas that allow the creature to adjust its buoyancy. Most gastropods have coiled shells in the form of a logarithmic spiral, the only form of a coil that can both increase in size and retain its shape. Such an architecture is an efficient way to maintain strength while retaining the compactness of the shell. Some mollusks cement old discarded shells and other sea floor debris to their own shells. They use this technique as a means to camouflage themselves from predators, and to prevent sinking into soft sand or mud. While many mollusks have shells for protection from predators and environmental stresses, shells also have their disadvantages. Shells are permanent structures that mollusks must carry around for the rest of their lives, and its weight could slow the creature down. Some mollusks, such as the squid and octopus, have evolved by eliminating shells altogether.
Shell shape is a product of evolution which is greatly influenced by local environment and type of sea floor. A shell that is low and wide might indicate strong waves or many predators. A thinner, more spherical shell probably comes from deep water, or areas around the north and south pole that are poor in calcium (unlike rich tropical waters). On hard sea floors, crawling gastropods have coiled shells or flat, saucer-like shell cases that allow them to retreat into the shell when in danger. On a sandy or rubble strewn surface, shells have expanded shell edges that help stabilize the mollusk with its opening facing down. In calmer waters, sculpted features such as spines increase the volume of the shell, making the mollusk look more formidable against predators. This also increases the surface area of the shell, allowing other marine organisms to settle on the mollusk’s shell surface, serving as a physical and chemical camouflage. For burrowing in soft muddy or sandy surfaces, some mollusks have evolved smooth, long, tapering shells. Many molluscs are able to withdraw far enough into their shells to be beyond the reach of predators. Others are able to block their apertures with a hardened plug called an operculum.
Environmental changes, injuries, or abnormal conditions of the mantle are often reflected in the shell they form. When the animal encounters harsh conditions which limit its food supply or otherwise cause it to become dormant for a while, the mantle often ceases to produce the shell substance. When conditions improve again and the mantle resumes its task, a ‘growth line’ is produced extending the entire length of the shell. Patterns and colors on the shell after these dormant periods are sometimes quite different from previous colors and patterns. Each species of mollusk will build the external shell in a genetically predetermined shape, pattern, ornamentation, and color, while at the same time, giving itself a look all its own.
