Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples Part 7

Reindeer grazing, from the Thayngen Cave.

The representation of the human figure is extremely rare. I have already mentioned the young man trying to strike an aurochs which is running away from him; and the woman wearing a necklace. The former (Fig. 45), found at Laugerie, is engraved on a piece of reindeer antler about twenty-five centimetres long. The aurochs with its head down and quant.i.ties of bristling hair, widely open nostrils, arched and uplifted tail, presents the appearance of a terrified animal endeavoring to escape the danger threatening it. The man is naked, and has a round head, his hair is stiff and seems to stand up on the top of his skull; on the chin a short beard can clearly be made out; the face expresses the delight and excitement of the chase. The neck is long, the arm short, and the spine of unusual length. In the other example of the representation of the human figure, that of the woman wearing a necklace, drawn on a piece of a shoulder-blade of a reindeer, she is seen lying by a stag, and would seem to be in an advanced state of pregnancy. The piece of bone however is broken, and the head of the woman is lost, which of course greatly lessens the value of the relic.

FIGURE 44

Head of OVIBOS MOSCHATUS engraved on wood, found in the Thayngen Cave.

FIGURE 45

Young man chasing the aurochs, from Laugerie.

On a fragment of a staff of office from the Madeleine Cave is engraved a man between two horses' heads (Fig. 46). On a reindeer antler is represented a woman with flat b.r.e.a.s.t.s and very high hips, followed by a serpent; a sh.e.l.l from the crag near Walton-on-the-Naze had a human face roughly engraved on one side. The Abby, Bourgeois, in the excavations so fruitful of results at Rochebertier, found a rough carving of a human face (Fig. 47); M. Piette at Mas d'Azil found a little bust of a woman, carved on the root of the tooth of a horse. This statuette had a low forehead, a prominent nose, a retreating chin, and b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the negress type of the present day; characteristics quite unlike those of the skeletons taken from this cave or those near it. We wonder whether the artist meant to represent the features of a race other than his own.[108] M. du Bouchet mentions a rough sketch engraved on a flint discovered near Dax; the workman, doubtless daunted by the difficulties of his task, had abandoned it unfinished. It is, however, easy to tell what it was meant for. The skull is low and flat, the nose but slightly prominent, the eyes are oblique, and neither the mouth nor the chin are finished. The magnificent collection of the Marquis de Vibraye contains a little figure from Laugerie, representing a nude woman without arms. Thin and stiff, she is chiefly remarkable for the exaggerated size of the s.e.xual organs, and for some peculiar protuberances on the loins. We dwell upon the former peculiarity, because it is so far extremely rare, whereas certain relics of the Greeks and Romans, in spite of the comparatively advanced civilization of these two great races, are such that they can only be exhibited in private museums. Such depravity as this implies was then quite an exception among the cave-men, and but for the one example I have just mentioned, I have no phallic representations to refer to except the few from the Ma.s.senat collection, which were shown at the Exhibition of 1889.

FIGURE 46

Fragment of a staff of office, from the Madeleine Cave.

FIGURE 47

Human face carved on a reindeer antler, found in the Rochebertier Cave (Charente).

We must not close this account of the art efforts of the men of the Stone age without mentioning the remarkable discovery by M. Siette, of flints covered with lines and geometrical designs colored with red chalk. These are the very earliest examples of the art of painting which have hitherto come to our knowledge. They bear witness to a remarkable progress made by our remote ancestors of the valleys of the Pyrenees.

We cannot more appropriately close this chapter than by quoting the magnificent verse of Lucretius, which brings before us, better than could a long description, the condition of these men, and the humble starting-point from which humanity has advanced to achieve its immortal destiny:

Necdum res igni scibant tractare neque uti Pellibus et spoliis corpus vestire ferarum, Sed nemora atque caveos monteis sylvasque colebant Et frutices inter condebant squalida membra Verbera ventorum vitare imbreisque coactei.[109]

CHAPTER IV

Caves, Kitchen-Middings, Lake Stations, "Terremares," Crannoges, Burghs, "Nurhags," "Talayoti," and "Truddhi."

The earliest races of men lived in a climate less rigorous than ours, on the sh.o.r.es of wide rivers, in the midst of fertile districts, where fishing and the chase easily supplied all their needs. These races were numerous and prolific, and we find traces of them all over Western Europe, from Norfolk to the middle of Spain. What were the homes of these men and their families? Did they crouch in dens, as Tacitus says the German tribes did in his day? In his "Ancient Wiltshire," Sir R. Coalt h.o.a.re says that the earliest human habitations were holes dug in the earth and covered over with the branches of trees. Near Joigny there still remain some circular holes in the ground, about fifty feet in diameter by sixteen to twenty deep, known in the country under the name of BUVARDS. The trunk of a tree was fixed at the bottom and rose above the ground, and the branches plastered with clay formed the roof. The floor of these BUVARDS consists of a greasy black earth mixed with bones, cinders, charcoal, and worked flints. Amongst the last named, polished hatchets predominate, which proves that these refuges were inhabited in Neolithic times, but there is nothing to prevent our supposing that they were also occupied in the Palaeolithic period. Ameghino gives a still more striking example of an earth-dwelling. Near Mercedes, about twenty leagues from Buenos Ayres, he picked up numerous human bones, together with arrow-heads, chisels, flint knives, bone stilettos and polishers, and bones of animals scratched and cut by man. Later, Ameghino discovered the actual dwelling of this primeval man, and his strange home was beneath the carapace of a gigantic armadillo, the now extinct glyptodon seen in Fig. 48.

FIGURE 48

The glyptodon.

"All around the carapace," says Ameghino, "in the reddish agglomerate of the original. soil lay charcoal cinders, burnt and split bones, and flints. Digging beneath this, a flint implement was found, with some long split llama and stag bones, which had evidently been handled by man, with some toxodon and mylodon teeth." Fig. 49 represents the now extinct mylodon. Some time afterwards, the discovery of another carapace under similar conditions added weight to Ameghino's supposition.[110] In the midst of the pampas, those vast treeless plains, where no rock or accident of conformation affords shelter from heat or cold or a hiding-place from wild beasts, man was not at a loss; he hollowed out for himself a hole in the earth, roofing it over with the sh.e.l.l of a glyptodon, and securing a retreat where he could be safe at least for a time.

FIGURE 49

Mylodon robustus.

It was not until later, driven to do so by the cold, that man learnt to use the natural caves hollowed out in limestone rocks, either in geological convulsions or by the quieter action of water. The absence in the caves which have been excavated in America of implements of the Ch.e.l.leen type, the most ancient known as yet, would point to this conclusion, though it is impossible to fix the earliest date of their occupation. This date, moreover, varies very much in different localities. The earth was but gradually peopled, and our ancestors penetrated into different countries in successive migrations. Some caves have recently been discovered in Wales, in the midst of Glacial deposits.[111] The Boulder Clay and marine drift on neighboring heights are incontrovertible proofs of the submergence of this region, when Great Britain was almost completely covered with ice. Excavations made in 1886 have brought to light a series of deposits, one above the other, the gravel and red earth containing Quaternary bones and worked flints, whilst the stalagmite and ooze are evidently of more recent origin. This is the usual state of things in all the English eaves; but in those of the Clyde, the bone beds had been disturbed and mixed with striated pebbles and Glacial drift. From this Hicks, who superintended the excavations, concluded that man and the Quaternary animals had lived in those caves before the Glacial epoch, and before the great submergence, which in some places was no less than some 1,300 feet below the present level of the sea. If this were so, it would be one of the most ancient proofs not only of the presence of man, but also of the kind of habitation he first dwelt in. These conclusions have, however, been hotly disputed. M. Arcelin[112] remarks that there are in England two exceptional geological landmarks, the Forest Bed representing the last Pliocene formations, and the River Gravels, which are the most ancient Quaternary deposits. Between the two, we find the Boulder Clay of Glacial origin. Now the fauna of the caves of the Clyde, far from resembling that of the Forest Bed, appears to be more recent than that of the ancient deposits of the River Gravels. Amongst this fauna we find neither the ELEPHAS ANTIQUUS nor the RHINOCEROS MERCKII; the worked flints are not like those known as belonging to the River-Gravel type, but the relics more nearly resemble those of the Reindeer period of France. It is therefore impossible, in the present state of our knowledge, to a.s.sert that man lived in the southwest of England in the Glacial epoch, to the phenomena of which, if he witnessed them, he must eventually have fallen a victim.

Our ancestors must constantly have disputed the possession of their caves of refuge with animals, but there is often a certain distinction between those chiefly occupied by man and the mere dens of wild beasts. The latter are generally more difficult of access, and are only to be entered by long, low, narrow, dark pa.s.sages. Those permanently inhabited by man are wide, not very deep, and they are well lighted. That at Montgaudier, for instance, has an arched entrance some forty-five feet wide by eighteen high. The cave-men had already learnt to appreciate the advantages of air and light.

The caves are often of considerable height; that of Ma.s.sat is some 560 feet high, that of Lherm is 655, that of Bouicheta nearly 755, that of Loubens 820, and that of Santhenay is, as much as 1,344 feet high. Those of Eyzies, Moustier, and Aurignac are also very lofty. As the valleys were hollowed out by the rushing torrents of the Quaternary floods, men sought a home near the waters which were indispensable to their existence, and came to dwell on the sh.o.r.es of rivers. The most ancient of the inhabited caves, therefore, are those on the highest levels, but the difference in the nature of the country and the varying force of geological action have led to so many exceptions, that all we can say with any certainty is that the caves were inhabited at different epochs. That of Montgaudier, for instance, was filled with an acc.u.mulation of ooze about forty feet thick. Weapons and tools lay one above the other from the bottom to the top, and it is easy to distinguish the succession of hearths by the blackened earth, cinders, charcoal, and crushed bones lying about them.

In the Placard Cave eight different deposits bear witness to the presence of man; and these are separated by others bare of traces of human occupation. The lowest deposit, which is some twenty-five feet below the present level of the soil, contains worked flints of the Mousterien type, above which, but separated by an acc.u.mulation of DEBRIS which has fallen from the roof, comes a layer in which was found a number of arrow-heads of the shape of laurel leaves. The fauna of both these levels includes the reindeer, the horse, and the aurochs. As we go up we find, above another layer of DEBRIS, the Solutreen type of tools and weapons represented by bone implements and numerous arrow-heads, this time stalked and notched. The four following levels correspond with those belonging to what is known as the Madeleine type, and the arrow-heads are decorated with geometrical designs. The traces of human occupation at different times, doubtless separated by long intervals, are therefore very clearly defined. The Fontabert Cave, in Dauphine, contained, at a depth of about six feet, traces of fire and roughly worked flints, and about three feet below the surface lay the skeleton of a man, who had perhaps been overtaken by a fall of earth, still holding in his hand a polished dipper of fine workmanship. Yet a third and evidently more recent period is characterized by a jade crescent. We might easily multiply instances of a similar kind, but that we wish to avoid so much repet.i.tion.

We soon begin to find evidence of the progress made by man, and though in Neolithic times he still continued to occupy caves he learned to adapt them better to his needs. The rock shelters of the Pet.i.t-Morin valley, so well explored by M. de Baye, are the best examples we can give.

These caves are hollowed out of a very thick belt of cretaceous limestone. They date from different epochs, and each presents special characteristics which can easily be recognized. Some were used as burial-places, others as habitations. In the former the entrance is of irregular shape, the walls are roughly cut, and the work is of the most elementary description. The sepulchral eaves were simply closed by a large stone rolled into place and covered with rubbish, the better to hide the entrance. The shelters used to live in show much more careful work, and are divided into two unequal parts by a wall cut in the living rock. To get into the second part.i.tion one has to go down steps, cut in the limestone, and these steps are worn with long usage. The entrance was cut out of a ma.s.sive piece of rock, left thick on purpose, and on either side of the opening the edges still show the rabbet which was to receive the door. Two small holes on the right and left were probably used to fix a bar across the front to strengthen the entrance. A good many of these eaves are provided with an opening for ventilation, and some skilful contrivances were resorted to for keeping out water. Inside we find different floors, shelves, and crockets cut in the chalk, and on the floors M. de Baye picked up sh.e.l.ls, ornaments, and flints, which were lying just where their owners had left them. Very different is all this from the Vezere caves, and everything proves an undeniable improvement in the conditions of life.

The most interesting of all the objects found in these caves are, however, the carvings; but few date from Neolithic times, and some archaeologists have argued from their absence in favor of the displacement everywhere of old races by the incursion of new-corners. Some of these carvings represent hafted hatchets, the flint being painted black to make the raised design stand out better. Others represent human figures. In the Coizard Cave, for instance, was found a roughly outlined representation of a woman with a prominent nose, eyes indicated by black dots, highly developed b.r.e.a.s.t.s, but no lower limbs. A necklace adorns her throat, and a pendant hanging from this necklace is colored yellow. On the pa.s.sage leading to the door is engraved another figure which was originally more accurately drawn than the others, but is not in such good preservation. In the Courjonnet Cave we see a woman with a bird's bead; she was probably one of the LARES PENATES, the protectors of the domestic hearth. We meet with this same G.o.ddess at Santorin, and at Troy, and on the sh.o.r.es of the Vistula, which is a very interesting ethnological fact.

The objects found in the sepulchral caves are important, and included a number of arrow-heads with transverse cutting edges. There is no doubt about their use; they have been picked up in black earth, in contact with human bones, the decomposition of the soft parts of which caused them to fall out of the mortal wound they had inflicted. With these arrow-heads were found flint knives, large sloped sc.r.a.pers, polishers, and bone stilettos, the femora of a ruminant with a pig's tooth fixed on to each end, hoes made of stag horn, beads and pendants made of bone, sh.e.l.l, schist, quartz, and aragonite, with the teeth of bears, boars, wolves, and foxes, all pierced with holes. Some of the sh.e.l.l anti schist beads were spread upon the surface of the skull, and perhaps formed a net or RESILLE, such as that already referred to as found at Baousse-Rousse.

For centuries this occupation of caves continued, offering as they did a shelter that was dry and warm in winter, and cool in summer. Homer tells us that the Cyclops lived on the heights of the mountains and in the depths of the caves,[113] and Prometheus says that, like the feeble ant, men dwelt in deep subterranean caves, where the sun never penetrated.[114]

Whilst the men of the Pet.i.t-Morin valley hollowed out caves, or enlarged those made by nature, others took refuge in buts made of dried clay and interlaced branches, or in tents of the skins of the animals they had slain, and, though these fragile dwellings have disappeared, leaving no trace, there yet remain indelible evidences of the presence of many successive generations. Everywhere throughout the world we find heaps of rubbish, consisting chiefly of the sh.e.l.ls of mollusca and crustacea, broken bones, flakes of flint, and fragments of stone and bone implements, covering vast areas and often rising to a considerable height.

Not until our own day did these rubbish heaps attract attention, and it was reserved to our own generation, so interested in all that relates to the past, to recognize their true significance. Steenstrup noticed, in the north of Europe, that these mounds consisted nearly entirely of the sh.e.l.ls of edible species, such as the oyster, mussel, and LITTORINA LITTOREA; that they were all those of adult specimens, but not all subject to similar conditions of existence or native to the same waters. The kitchen-middings, or heaps of kitchen refuse -- such was the name given to these sh.e.l.l-mounds -- could not have been the natural deposits left by the waves after storms, for in that case they would have been mixed with quant.i.ties of sand and pebbles. The conclusion is inevitable, that man alone could have piled up these acc.u.mulations, which were the refuse flung away day by day after his meals. The excavation of the kitchen-middings confirmed in a remarkable manner the opinion of Steenstrup, and everywhere a number of important objects were discovered. In several places the old hearths were brought to light. They consisted of flat stones, on which were piles of cinders, with fragments of wood and charcoal. It was now finally proved that these mounds occupied the site of ancient settlements, the inhabitants of which rarely left the coast, and fed chiefly on the mollusca which abounded in the waters of the North Sea.

These primeval races, however savage they may have been, were not wanting in intelligence. The earliest inhabitants of Russia placed their dwellings near rivers above the highest flood-level known to or foreseen by them. The Scandinavians were most precise in the orientation of their homes, and M. de Quatref.a.ges points out that the kitchen-midding of Soelager is set against a hill in the best position for protecting those who lived near it from the north winds, which are so trying in these districts on account of their violence. At Havelse, says Sir John Lubbock, the settlement was on rather higher ground, and, though close to the sh.o.r.e, was quite beyond the reach of the waves. The English visitors had an excavation made whilst they were present, and in two or three hours they obtained about a hundred fragments of bone, many rude flakes, sling stones, and fragments of flint, together with some rough axes of the ordinary sh.e.l.l-mound type. The excavations at Meilgaard a little later by the same explorers were even more fruitful in results.

Scandinavia does not appear to have been occupied in the Paleolithic period, and the most ancient facts concerning it only date from the expeditions of the Romans against the Teutons, and our knowledge even of them is very incomplete.[115] We are still ignorant of much which may have been known to the Carthaginians and the Phoenicians. It is possible that in the remote days under notice the Scandinavians were ignorant of the art of tilling the ground, for so far no cereal or agricultural product of any kind has been discovered, nor the bones of any domestic animal, except indeed those of the dog, which may, however, have been still in a wild state. Amongst the bones collected from the kitchen-middings, those of the stag, the kid, and the boar are much the most numerous. The bear, the urns, the wild cat, the otter, the porpoise, the seal, and the small mammals, the marten, the water-rat and the mouse, have also been found. At Havelse were collected more than 3,500 mammal bones, amongst which do not occur those of the musk-ox, the reindeer, the elk, or the marmot; their absence bearing witness to a more temperate climate than that of the present day in the regions under notice. The stag antlers found belong to every season of the year, from which we may conclude that the people of these districts, like the cave-men of the Pyrenees, had given up a nomad life and remained at home all the year round, living in the dwellings they had built upon the sh.o.r.es of the sea.

Amongst the birds found, we may mention the large penguin, now extinct, the moor-fowl, which fed entirely on pine buds, and several species of clucks and geese; whilst amongst the fish were the herring, the cod, the dab, and the eel. The numerous relics of chelonia prove the existence of numbers of the turtle tribe in the North Sea.

A great variety of objects, most of them of a coa.r.s.e type, have been found beneath the kitchen-middings; metals are however completely absent, and it is probable that they were quite unknown to the Scandinavians for several centuries after their arrival in the country.

It is easy to quote similar facts in other countries. In 1877, Count Ouvarof mentioned, at the Archaeological Congress at Kazan, some kitchen-middings near the Oka, a little river flowing into the Volga near Nijni-Novgorod. In excavating some BOUGRYS, or little mounds of sand overlooking the valley, he discovered amongst the layers of alluvium, successive deposits of cinders and fragments of charcoal, which appear to have been the remains of a fire. A little lower down in another deposit were fragments of pottery, stone weapons and implements, and an immense number of sh.e.l.ls. Judging from these relics of their daily life, this numerous population must have fed exclusively on fish and mollusca, for excavations brought to light but few mammal bones. The mollusca were all of species that only live in salt water. From this we know that the waves washed the sh.o.r.es near this BOUGRY, and that a milder climate probably prevailed in these regions, making life more supportable.

Virchow has recognized on the sh.o.r.es of Lake Burtneek in Germany, a kitchen-midding belonging to the earliest Neolithic times, perhaps even to the close of the Palaeolithic period. He there picked up some stone and bone implements, and notices on the one hand the absence of the reindeer, and on the other, as in Scandinavia, that of domestic animals. But in this case, the home of the living became the tomb of the dead, and numerous skeletons lay beside the abandoned hearths. Similar discoveries have been made in Portugal; sh.e.l.l-heaps having been found thirty-five to forty miles from the coast, and from sixty-five to eighty feet above the sea-level. Here also excavations have brought to light several different hearths; and in many of the most ancient kitchen-middings in the valley of the Tigris were found crouching skeletons, proving that here too the home had become the tomb.[116]

Similar deposits are by no means rare in France. M. du Chatellier mentions one in Brittany, which he estimates as 325 cubic feet in size. From it be has taken spear- and arrow-heads, knives and sc.r.a.pers, some highly finished, others but roughly cut and often with scarcely any shape at all. The population was evidently ichthyophagous, to judge by the vast acc.u.mulations of sh.e.l.ls of scallops, oysters, limpets, pectens, and other mollusca. The few animal bones are those of the stag, the bear, and certain wading birds.

At Canche, near Etaples, has been evade out a series of mounds forming a semicircle some eight hundred and fifty feet in extent. These mounds are made up of successive layers of sh.e.l.ls and charcoal, the relics of successive occupations. Lastly we must mention a kitchen-midding situated at the mouth of the Somme, which is eight hundred and twenty feet long by about one hundred wide. It consists princ.i.p.ally of sh.e.l.ls of adult species, with which are mixed fragments of coa.r.s.e black pottery and numerous goat and sheep bones, the latter bearing witness to a more recent date than that of the kitchen-middings of Scandinavia or of Germany.

Throughout Europe similar facts are coming to light. Evans mentions heaps of sh.e.l.ls on the coasts of England. Chantre speaks of others near Lake Gotchai in the Caucasus, and Nordenskiold of others at Cape North, to which he wishes to restore its true name of Jokaipi. He sa.s.s these mounds are exactly like those of Denmark.