Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples Part 5

Amulet made of the penien bone of a bear, and found in the Marsoulas Cave.

There is no doubt that it is the caves of the south of France which have yielded the most interesting objects; needles with drilled eyes, and barbed arrows have been picked up in considerable numbers at Eyzies, Laugerie-Ba.s.se, at Bruniquel, Ma.s.sat, and in the Madeleine Cave. Dr. Garrigou mentions some rein deer or roebuck antlers found in Ariege caves, which had been made into regular stilettos. In the deposits at Lafaye were fouled stilettos or bodkins, varying in length from two to six inches; needles measuring from nineteen to one hundred and five millimetres and provided with eyes; at Marsoulas were found an amulet made of the penien bone of a bear (Fig. 23), some pendants, and some pointed pieces of bone which astonish us by the delicacy of their workmanship, and the drawings with which they were adorned.

FIGURE 24

Various stone and bone objects from California.

At Paviland, Dr. Buckland discovered a wolf bone cut to a point. Kent's Hole yielded a number of needles resembling those of the Madeleine Cave; at Aggtelek (Hungary) were found some bones of the cave-bear pointed to serve as daggers, cut into sc.r.a.pers or pierced to serve as amulets or ornaments. In Belgium, objects very similar to these have been found made of reindeer antler and dating from the most remote times. The antlers moulted by the reindeer in the spring were in especial request.

Excavations in the sepulchral mounds near San Francisco (California) have yielded thousands of bone implements (Fig. 24). Others similar to them have been found in the layers of cinders at Madisonville (Ohio) and beneath the numerous kitchen-middings of the coasts of the Atlantic and Pacific.

The processes employed by the cave-men were very simple. In one of the excavations superintended by him, M. Dupont[93] picked up the radius of a horse bearing symmetrically made incisions executed with a view to getting off splinters of the bone. These splinters were rounded by rubbing either with chips of flint, or on such polishers as are to be seen in any of the museums; then one end was sharpened, and the other, if need were, pierced with a hole. It is astonishing to find some of them as fine as the steel needles of the present day, and with perfectly round eyes made with the help of nothing but a rough flint, and there would still be some doubt on the subject, if M. Lartet[94]

had not obtained exactly similar results by working on fragments of bone with the flints he had fouled in these excavations. Other experiments of a similar kind were no less conclusive, for Merk[95]

perforated all ivory plaque with a pointed flint which he used as a gimlet.

Some objects, which are supposed to date from Neolithic times, bear witness to an altogether unexpected degree of civilization. In the heart of Germany, in the peat-bogs of Laybach and Worbzig on the banks of the Saale, have been found earthenware spoons of the shape of modern spatulae; at Geraffin on Lake Bienne, a finely shaped spoon made of the wood of a yew tree; and at Lagozza, another in shining black earthenware. Lartet had already brought to light a bone implement covered with ornaments in relief which he ascribed to the Palaeolithic period, and which he imagined had been used for extracting marrow; and another archaeologist tells of objects in reindeer antler found in the Gourdan Cave, which he thinks were used for a similar purpose. In the Saint-Germain Museum are preserved the remains of spoons from the bed of the Seine, and in the collections of England are fragments of bone taken from beneath the West-Kennet dolmen, which were all probably employed for extracting marrow. But the most important discovery of all, which leaves no doubt on the subject, is that made by M. Perrault at the Cha.s.sey Camp, near Chalon-sur-Saone, beneath a hearth dating from Neolithic times. He collected fourteen earthenware spoons; one of them of a round shape and remarkable for its size, was unfortunately broken (Fig. 25). It is of brown earthenware with a rather rough surface mixed with bits of flint, and is so much worn that it had evidently been in use a long time. Lastly two spoons, also of earthenware, have recently been found near Dondas (Lot-et-Garonne). The use of spoons, which certainly marked considerable progress, must therefore have spread rapidly.

FIGURE 25

Dipper found in the excavations at the Cha.s.sey Camp.

Long previously, however, pottery of a great variety of form bore witness to tire plastic skill of man. Every where we find vessels of coa.r.s.e material mixed with grains of sand or mica to give more consistency to the paste which was baked in the fire, and had often no further ornamentation than the marks of the fingers of the potter. Does this pottery date from Palaeolithic times, or were the earthenware vessels later additions at the time of those disturbances of deposits which are the despair of archaeologists? A few examples may enable us better to answer this question.

Fraas tells us that fragments of pottery have been found in all the caves of Germany in which excavations have been made. He quotes that of Hohlefels, where he himself picked up such fragments amongst the bones of the mastodon, the mammoth, the rhinoceros, and the cave-lion, when the remains of these animals were for the first time found in Germany. In 1872, the making of the railway from Nuremberg to Ratisbon brought to light a cave of considerable depth. In its lower deposits were found nothing but the bones of hyenas, bears, and lions, of which the cave had been the resort for centuries. Among the most ancient deposits, relics of a similar kind were found in abundance, but now mixed with numerous fragments of pottery, worked flints, and fish bones, including those of the carp and the pike, with the bones of mammals, amongst which predominated those of the rhinoceros, most of them intentionally split open. At Argecilla, twenty leagues from Madrid, Vilanova discovered a regular workshop, in which were knives and flint arrow-heads, together with some very primitive pottery made of clay that had evidently been brought from a distance, as there is none in the district in which the pottery was found, In an upper deposit Vilanova collected more than two hundred implements made of diorite, a rock frequently used in Spain, some very remarkable celts of serpentine dating from the Neolithic period, and numerous fragments of very delicate pottery. Not far off he discovered another workshop, containing some very fine hatchets perfectly polished, and some keramic ware tastily ornamented. The progress made is as marked in the weapons and tools as in the pottery.

We have also seen some fragments of earthenware from the caves of Chiampo and Laglio, near Lake Como, and from that known as the Cave dei Colombi, in tire island of Palmaria, which was occupied shortly before the Neolithic period. But it is Belgium which yields the most decisive proof on this subject, and a visit to the Brussels Museum is enough to convince the most incredulous. The excavations made under M. Dupont in the caves of the Meuse and the Lesse have again and again brought to light fragments of pottery, a.s.sociated with the bones of Palaeolithic animals. Schmerling, too, had already found similar fragments in the Engis Cave, mixed with flint weapons of the rudest description; and his discoveries have been strikingly confirmed by those recently made at Spy, near Namur,[96] and by others made by M. Fraipont.[97] In portions of this same Engis Cave not previously explored the learned professor of Liege found, in 1887, fragments of a vase of ovoid form, some flints of the Mousterien type, and some bones of extinct mammals. Most of the pottery in the Brussels Museum is black and of primitive make; some few fragments, however, are of finished workmanship. We may mention especially an ovoid vase, remarkable for its size and for its lateral projections. This vase, which is hand-modelled, came from the Frontal Cave; the clay is of blackish hue mixed with little bits of calcareous spar. M. Ordinaire, Vice-Consul for France at Callao, speaks of the CAYANES or MACAHUAS, which are earthenware basins of great symmetry of form, made by the Combos women, without turning wheels or mills of any kind. Though the elegant shape of the Frontal and other vases at first surprises us, reflection convinces us that men who could cut stones with such rare skill would certainly be able to produce equally good pottery.

FIGURE 26

Pottery of a so far uncla.s.sified type found in the Argent Cave (France).

Similar instances may easily be quoted from France. Excavations at Solutre have yielded several fragments of yellow, hand-made pottery very insufficiently baked; and other pieces have been found in the peat-bogs of Bastide de Bearn with the bones of reindeer, and worked flints similar to those found in Quaternary deposits. We may add that at Lafaye, Bize, and Pondre (Hainault) discoveries were made of pottery mixed with human remains and with those of animals now extinct; and in the Argent Cave (Ba.s.ses-Alpes) a new type, shown in Fig. 26, has been found which merits special attention. In the very earliest days of prehistoric research the Nabrigas Cave (Lozere) was excavated by M. Joly, who found in it many fragments of pottery. In a volume published shortly before his death he relates the circ.u.mstances of his discovery, and earnestly maintains its authenticity. Later excavations, made under the direction of masters in prehistoric science, would have thrown some doubts on the a.s.sertions made by the professor of Toulouse, if MM. Martel and Launay had not brought forward a fresh proof in support of it. "On the 30th August, 1885,"[98] they say, "we picked up at Nabrigas in a deep hole, untouched by previous excavations and not displaced by water, some human bones and a piece of pottery side by side with two skeletons of URSUS SPELAEUS. The human bones, of indeterminate race, included an upper left maxillary, still retaining three teeth, an incomplete mastoid apophysis, and seven pieces of crania, belonging to different individuals. The piece of pottery only measured one and a half by two and a quarter inches; the clay is gray and friable, bound together with big bits of quartz, mica, and a few particles of charcoal." There would appear to be no sufficient reason to question the exactness of a discovery so carefully studied.

Many eminent archaeologists, however, maintain that pottery was completely unknown in Paleolithic times, and they do not hesitate to attribute to a later period any deposit in which it occurs where its presence cannot be accounted for by later displacements. M. Cartailhac declares that he has never been able to establish either in the south of France or in the central table-land a single fact which justifies us in a.s.serting that the men of the Reindeer period, still less those of earlier epochs, knew how to make pottery. The first explorers, he adds, did not always distinguish with sufficient care the vestiges of different epochs, the relics of diverse origins. How often have bones carried along by water, or brought where they are found by animals, been mixed with those abandoned by men, or the deposits of the Neolithic period with those of the earliest Quaternary times! How often have the contents of a pa.s.sage giving access to a cave been confounded with those of the cave itself! Hence deplorable errors, which it is impossible to rectify now. Evans and Geikie in their turn a.s.sert the absence in England[99] of Palaeolithic pottery, and Sir J. Lubbock energetically maintains this opinion.

Doubtless these are great authorities, and yet, in view of the facts now known, it is difficult to believe that man was long a stranger to the art of making pottery. Its invention required no great effort of intelligence, and its fabrication presented no great difficulties. Man had but to knead the soft clay which he trod under his foot, and the plasticity of which he could not fail to notice. This clay hardened in the sun, and hollows were formed as it shrunk -- the first vessel was discovered! Experience soon taught man to replace the heat of the sun by that of the fire, and to add a few bits of some hard substance to give the clay greater consistency. These first crude and clumsy vases have been preserved to our own day as irrefutable witnesses to the work of our ancestors. Though, therefore, we cannot be sure that pottery was made in Quaternary times by all the races that peopled Europe,[100] it is impossible to deny that a great many of them were in possession of the art. This difference in the degree of civilization attained to by men living but short distances from each other need not surprise us, for all travellers report similar facts amongst contemporary savage races.

The baking of pottery is a proof that the use of fire was known in the most remote times. The existence in various places of ma.s.ses of cinders, fragments of charred wood, and half-calcined bones, proves it yet more decidedly. At Solutre, at Louverne (Mayenne), at Saint-Florent (Corsica), to give but a few examples, we find large slabs of half-calcined stone, laid flat and covered with heaps of cinders and all sorts of rubbish. These slabs formed the family hearth, where man prepared his food, with the help of the fire he had learnt to ignite and to keep burning.

How did man arrive at a discovery so vital to his existence? The Vedas a.s.sign the origin of fire to the rubbing together in a storm of the dry branches of trees. "The first men," says Vitruvius,[101] "were born, as were other animals, in the forests, caves, and woods. The thick trees violently agitated by the storm took fire, through the rubbing together of their branches; the fury of the flames terrified the men who found themselves near them and made them take to flight. Soon rea.s.sured, however, they gradually approached again and realized all the advantages they might gain for their bodies from the gentle warmth of the fire. They added fuel to the flames, they kept the fire up, they fetched other men whom they made understand by signs all the usefulness of this discovery. The men thus a.s.sembled articulated a few sounds, which, repeated every day, accidentally formed certain words which served to designate objects, and soon they had a language which enabled them to speak and to understand one another. It was, then, the discovery of fire which led men to come together to form a society, to live together, and to inhabit the same places."

Without pausing to consider the somewhat puerile theories of Vitruvius, or the myths which testify to the importance attached to fire by primeval man, we are at liberty to suppose that a conflagration caused by lightning or by the spontaneous combustion of vegetable materials in a state of fermentation, or other similar phenomena, made known to man the power of fire, and the use it might be to him. The accidental striking together of two flints produced a spark; observation taught men to obtain a similar result by the same process; a great step in advance was made, and the future of humanity was a.s.sured. M. Dupont picked up in the Chaleux Cave a kidney-shaped piece of iron pyrites, hollowed out in a peculiar manner, which had evidently been used to obtain the precious spark. The Christy collection contains a granite pebble with a hole the shape of a cup, which had evidently been used to obtain fire, by rubbing round in it a stick of very dry wood. The two methods employed at the present day were therefore already in use. Lumholz tells us that the Australians of Herbert River get fire by rubbing two pieces of wood together. The Indians of the northwest of Colorado, the Yapais of the Caroline Islands, and the Mincopies of the Andaman Isles, with many other races, know no other process. We must, however, still maintain a certain reserve in dealing with the fire-obtaining implements of so imperfect a nature, and belonging to times so remote as those called prehistoric.

During bad seasons, or in the bitter cold of winter, primeval man contented himself with flinging over his shoulders the skins of the animals he had killed. He prepared these skins with flint sc.r.a.pers, and sewed them together with bone needles. In hot weather man probably roamed about stark naked. Shame is not a natural instinct; education alone develops it. Writing in 1617, Fynes Morison speaks of having seen at Cork young girls quite naked, engaged in crushing corn with a stone. The Tchoutchi women, says Nordenskiold, wear no clothes when in their tents, however great the cold. In tropical countries men, women, and children, all completely nude, went to meet the travellers who landed on their sh.o.r.es. Count Ursel, in a recent journey in Bolivia, in going through a little town, saw "near the public fountain some young girls already growing up making their ablutions and playing about in the garb of the earthly paradise." Travellers who visited j.a.pan a few years ago reported that the inhabitants, without distinction of age or s.e.x, came out of the water in a state of complete nudity, presenting a strange spectacle to European eyes. The sight of what is actually going on amongst comparatively civilized people in our own day enables us to understand better what must have been the state of things when the whole world was in a state of barbarism.

It was not until much later, in the times to which the name of Neolithic has been given, that men made stuffs, and replaced the skins of animals by lighter and more flexible garments. The inhabitants of the Lake Stations of Switzerland and of Italy cultivated hemp. At w.a.n.gen and at Robenhausen have been found shreds of coa.r.s.ely woven cloth, and at Lagozza fragments of yet more primitive material. On some of these pieces it is supposed that traces of fringe and attempts at ornamentation have been made out. Even in the Perigord caves Lartet noticed some long slim needles which could not have been used for sewing skins; and he concluded that they were intended for more delicate work, perhaps even for embroidery. A new art, and one which we certainly should not have expected to find is now met with for the first time.

It is probable that our savage ancestors tatooed themselves, or painted their bodies, as did the Britons in the time of Caesar, and as do modern savages, or, not to go so far afield, as do English sailors and some of the workingmen of France.[102] At Montastruc have been picked up some fragments of red chalk, and in Mayenne of red iron ore, whilst in the cave of Spy was found a bone filled with a very fine red powder, and in that of Saltpetriere some powder of the same kind was discovered preserved from destruction in a sh.e.l.l. Lartet and Christy have made similar discoveries in the caves of the Dordogne; M. Dupont in a shelter at Chaleux, and M. Riviere at Baousse-Rousse. The Abbe Bourgeois found at Villehonneur not only a piece of red chalk as big as a nut, but also an oval-shaped pebble, which had been used for grinding it, the interstices of the surface still retaining traces of coloring matter.

Red chalk was not the only substance employed. At Chatelperron, were picked up fragments of manganese; at Cueva de Rocca, near Valentia, pieces of cinnabar; in the Placard Cave, bits of black lead; and in the different stations in the Pyrenees, especially in that of Aurensan, ochre has been found which was doubtless used for the same purpose. At Solutre, ochre, manganese, and graphite were found; the last named had been sc.r.a.ped with a flint, and the scratches made by it are still distinctly visible. From a Westphalian cave, Schaafhausen took some dark yellow ochre; at Castern (Staffordshire), a bit of this same calcareous substance, worn with long service, was picked tip; in Cantire (Argyleshire), a piece of red hemat.i.te, which had evidently been brought from Westmoreland or Lancashire; and lastly, in Kent's Hole was found some peroxide of manganese.

All these fragments of ochre or manganese, red chalk or black lead, were reduced to powder with the help of pebbles, artificially hollowed out. Everywhere we meet with these primitive mortars, and side by side with them other pebbles in their native condition, which had evidently been used for crushing the coloring matter.

A recent discovery tends to confirm the hypothesis that these colors were used for the decoration of the human body. A curious engraving on a bone represents the head and arm of a man, and on the lower part of the forearm it is easy to make out a four-sided design which evidently indicated tatooing.

In every country, and in every climate, we find men as well as women manifesting a taste for ornament. The progress of civilization has greatly increased this taste, but it existed as a natural instinct in the very earliest days of humanity, and the contemporary of the mammoth and the cave-bear, the cave-man cowering in his miserable den, sought for ornaments with which to deck himself. In the caves near the stations occupied by primeval men we find little bits of fossil coral, beads of hardened clay, the teeth of bears, wolves, and foxes, boars'

tusks, and the jawbones of small mammals, fish-bones, and belemnites pierced with holes, and intended to be used as amulets or ornaments to be worn round the neck. At Lafaye, we find the incisors of small rodents serving the same purpose. The dweller in the Sordes Cave owned a precious necklace made of forty bears' and three lions' teeth. The teeth found often have on them ornamental lines, which doubtless indicated the rank or celebrated the deeds of the chief. The Abbe Bourgeois describes some stags' teeth found at Villehonneur (Charente), two of which bore scratches which may have had some signification. At Cro-Magnon were picked up some ivory plaques pierced with three holes; at Kent's bole were found some oval disks measuring five by three inches, which in the delicacy of their workmanship presented a curious contrast to the other objects taken from the same cave. In the Belgian caves here picked up some thin slices of jet and some ivory plaques, and in those of the south of France fragments of steat.i.te, cut into rectangular and lozenge shapes, whilst in the Thayngen Cave was found a pendant of lignite (Fig. 27). Men were not content with natural products; fashion demanded new forms and fresh materials.

FIGURE 27

1. Lignite pendant. 2. Bone pendant (Thayngen Cave).

But what most attracted the attention of the ancient inhabitants of France were bright-colored sh.e.l.ls. The caves of Roquemaure have yielded nearly a thousand disks and beads made of c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.ls; at Cro-Magnon more than three hundred sh.e.l.ls were picked up which formed a collar or necklace, which was not however so valuable as that of the man of Sordes. M. de Maret discovered at Placard numerous sh.e.l.ls; some belonging to ocean species still extant, and others fossils of forms now extinct. Many of them are foreign to the country in which they were found. From the most remote times therefore the inhabitants of the present department of Charente fished in the Gulf of Gascony, crossed Aquitania, visited the sh.e.l.l marl deposits of Anjou and Touraine, and penetrated as far as the present Paris basin. The finding of the CYPRINA ISLANDICA in one of the French caves proves that the prehistoric men of France even went as far away as the north of England. This is by no means an isolated fact; numerous sh.e.l.ls from the department of Champagne had been taken to tire sh.o.r.es of the Lesse and the Meuse. At Solutre have been found belemnites, ammonites, and Miocene sh.e.l.ls, which were certainly never native to that district, with pieces of rock-crystal from the Alps, and beads made of a jadeite of unknown origin.

In Scotland have been found necklaces of nerites and limpets; at Aurignac, eighteen little plaques of c.o.c.kle sh.e.l.l pierced with holes in the centre. At Laugerie-Ba.s.se, a man overtaken by a landslip had been crushed by the stones which had fallen upon him; time has destroyed his clothes, but the sh.e.l.ls with which he had decked himself are still preserved.[103] He had worn four on his forehead, two on each shoulder, four on each knee, and two on each foot. All idea of these sh.e.l.ls having formed a necklace must be abandoned; they were all notched, and had been used either. to adorn or fasten the clothes.

The most interesting discoveries, however, were those made in the caves of Baousse-Rousse, of which we have so often spoken. M. Riviere picked up the skeletons of two children, some thousand sh.e.l.ls (Na.s.sA NERITEA) artificially pierced, which had been used to deck their garments: Near an adult were other sh.e.l.ls forming a necklace, a bracelet, an amulet, and a garter worn on the left leg; whilst on the head was a regular RESILLE or net, not unlike that of the Spanish national costume, which net was made of small nerita sh.e.l.ls and kept in place by bone pins.

We must also mention amongst favorite ornaments beads made of jet and of very fine ochreous clay dried in the sun, of calcareous crystalline rock, and of grayish schist, and in other places of beads of amber or of hyaline quartz, the brightness of which attracted the attention. At the station of Menieux (Charente) with flints of a type to which it is usual to give the names of Mousterien or Solutreen, excavations have yielded numerous carefully polished b.a.l.l.s of calx, varying in diameter from one to two inches. If there had been any doubts as to their use, those doubts would have been removed by the discovery at Laugerie-Ba.s.se of a fragment of the shoulder-blade of a reindeer on which was engraved the figure of a woman wearing round her neck a necklace of clumsy round b.a.l.l.s. Other yet stranger ornaments have been found, for which what we have said about the cannibalism of early man should have prepared the reader. Our ancestors of the Stone age adorned themselves with necklaces of human teeth, and two skeletons have been dug out wearing round their necks this token of their victories. M. de Baye possesses in his collection some round pieces of skull pierced with holes (Fig. 28), and at the meeting of the American a.s.sociation in 1886, at Ann Arbor (Michigan) were presented some ornaments made of human bones from a mound in Ohio.

In taking from the gangue in which it was imbedded a skull from the megalithic monument of Vaureal, Pruner Bey noticed a fragment of a human shoulder blade pierced with an incision in which was fixed a little rounded piece of bone. This style of ornament seems to have remained in use for many centuries, for M. Nicaise has lately discovered at Moulin d'Oyes (Marne) a necklace made of calx b.a.l.l.s, sh.e.l.ls, and pendants cut out of the scales of unio sh.e.l.ls. On this necklace hung a round piece of human cranium, and in the Gallic cemetery at Varille, the exterior lamina of a human lumbar vertebra was fastened to a necklace made of coral beads.

FIGURE 28

Round pieces of skull pierced with holes (Al. de Baye's collection).

We are also acquainted with facts of another order, which may be mentioned in this connection. The men of Marjevols drank out of human crania; the Gren.o.ble Museum owns a drinking-vessel of this kind; others have been discovered at Billancourt, at Chavannes, at the Cha.s.sey Camp, and at Sutz, AEfele, and Loci-as in Switzerland, as well as at Brookville in the State of Indiana. Dr. Prunieres possesses half a human radius, probably that of a female, carefully polished and converted into a stiletto (Fig. 29). Dr. Garrigou has an arrow-head made of a human bone, Pellegrino a fibula converted into a polisher found in the lower beds of the celebrated Castione TERREMARE near Parma. At the meeting of the Prehistoric Congress in Paris in 1869, Pereira da Costa mentioned a femora converted into a sceptre or staff of office, and to conclude this melancholy list, Longperier mentions a human bone pierced with regular openings, which, by a strange irony of death, served as a flute to delight the ears of the living. .

FIGURE 29

Part of a rounded piece of a human parietal-Stiletto made of the end of a human radius -- Disk made of the burr of a stag's antler.

One of the earliest necessities of human nature must have been companionship; for help was absolutely necessary to enable man to cope with the dangers surrounding him. Tribes, formed at first of members of the same family, must have existed from the very dawn of humanity. The reindeer phalanges, pierced to serve as whistles (Fig. 30), found at Eyzies, Schussenreid, Laugerie-Ba.s.se, Bruniquel, in the Chaffaud Cave and the Belgian shelters, in a peat-marsh of Scania, in the island of Palmaria, and in many other places, were doubtless used to summon men to war or to the chase. In the Cottes Cave were found some reindeer and aurochs' shanks, which may naturally be supposed to have served the same purpose. The curious objects preserved in the Christy collections must also have been used in war or in the chase. They bear, in addition to the mark of their owner, notches of different shapes commemorating his exploits in battle or in hunting. At Solutre, MM. Ducrost and Arcelin noticed fragments of elephants'

tusks, calcareous plaques, and some sandstone disks from the Trias, with notches and equidistant lines evidently having a similar purpose.