Primitive Man Part 5

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 8.--_Dendrites_ or Crystallisations found on the surface of wrought Flints.]

The ancient flints present a gla.s.sy surface which singularly contrasts with the dull appearance of the fresh cleavages. They are also for the most part covered with a whitish coating or _patina_, which is nothing but a thin layer of carbonate of lime darkened in colour by the action of time. Lastly, many of these flints are ornamented with branching crystallisations, called _dendrites_, which form on their surface very delicate designs of a dark brown; these are owing to the combined action of the oxides of iron and manganese (fig. 8).

We must add that these flint implements often a.s.sume the colour of the soil in which they have been buried for so many centuries; and as Mr.

Prestwich, a learned English geologist, well remarks, this agreement in colour indicates that they have remained a very considerable time in the stratum which contains them.

Among the stone implements of primitive ages, some are found in a state of perfect preservation, which clearly bears witness to their almost unused state; others, on the contrary, are worn, rounded, and blunted, sometimes because they have done good service in bygone days, and sometimes because they have been many times rolled over and rubbed by diluvial waters, the action of which has produced this result. Some, too, are met with which are broken, and nothing of them remains but mere vestiges. In a general way, they are completely covered with a very thick coating which it is necessary to break off before they can be laid open to view.

They are especially found under the soil in grottos and caves, on which we shall remark further in some detail, and they are almost always mixed up with the bones of extinct mammalian species.

Certain districts which are entirely devoid of caves contain, however, considerable deposits of these stone implements. We may mention in this category the alluvial quarternary beds of the valley of the Somme, known under the name of drift beds, which were worked by Boucher de Perthes with an equal amount of perseverance and success.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 9.--Section of a Gravel Quarry at Saint-Acheul, which contained the wrought Flints found by Boucher de Perthes.]

This alluvium was composed of a gravelly deposit, which geologists refer to the great inundations which, during the epoch of the great bear and the mammoth, gave to Europe, by hollowing out its valleys, its present vertical outline. The excavations in the sand and gravel near Amiens and Abbeville, which were directed with so much intelligence by Boucher de Perthes, have been the means of exhuming thousands of worked flints, affording unquestionable testimony of the existence of man during the quaternary epoch.

All these worked flints may be cla.s.sed under some of the princ.i.p.al types, from which their intended use may be approximately conjectured.

One of the types which is most extensively distributed, especially in the drift beds of the valley of the Somme, where scarcely any other kind is found, is the _almond-shaped_ type (fig. 10).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 10.--Hatchet of the _Almond-shaped_ type, from the Valley of the Somme.]

The instruments of this kind are hatchets of an oval shape, more or less elongated, generally flattened on both sides, but sometimes only on one, carefully chipped all over their surface so as to present a cutting edge. The workmen of the Somme give them the graphic name of _cats'

tongues_.

They vary much in size, but are generally about six inches long by three wide, although some are met with which are much larger. The Pre-historic Gallery in the Universal Exposition of 1867, contained one found at Saint-Acheul, and exhibited by M. Robert, which measured eleven inches in length by five in width. This remarkable specimen is represented in fig. 11.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 11.--Flint Hatchet from Saint-Acheul of the so-called _Almond-shaped type_.]

Another very characteristic form is that which is called the _Moustier type_ (fig. 12), because they have been found in abundance in the beds in the locality of Moustier, which forms a portion of the department of Dordogne. This name is applied to the pointed flints which are only wrought on one side, the other face being completely plain.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 12.--Wrought Flint (_Moustier type_).]

To the same deposit also belongs the flint _sc.r.a.per_, the sharp edge of which forms the arc of a circle, the opposite side being of some considerable thickness so as to afford a grasp to the hand of the operator.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 13.--Flint Sc.r.a.per.]

Some of these instruments (fig. 13) are finely toothed all along their sharp edge; they were evidently used for the same purposes as our saws.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 14.--Flint Knife, found at Menchecourt, near Abbeville.]

The third type (fig. 14) is that of _knives_. They are thin and narrow tongue-shaped flakes, cleft off from the lump of flint at one blow. When one of the ends is chipped to a point, these knives become scratchers.

Sometimes these flints are found to be wrought so as to do service as augers.

The question is often asked, how these primitive men were able to manufacture their weapons, implements, and utensils, on uniform models, without the help of metallic hammers. This idea has, indeed, been brought forward as an argument against those who contend for the existence of quaternary man. Mr. Evans, an English geologist, replied most successfully to this objection by a very simple experiment. He took a pebble and fixed it in a wooden handle; having thus manufactured a stone hammer, he made use of it to chip a flint little by little, until he had succeeded in producing an oval hatchet similar to the ancient one which he had before him.

The flint-workers who, up to the middle of the present century, prepared gun-flints for the army, were in the habit of splitting the stone into splinters. But they made use of steel hammers to cleave the flint, whilst primitive man had nothing better at his disposal than another and rather harder stone.

Primitive man must have gone to work in somewhat the following way: They first selected flints, which they brought to the shape of those cores or _nuclei_ which are found in many places in company with finished implements; then, by means of another and harder stone of elongated shape, they cleft flakes off the flint. These flakes were used for making knives, scratchers, spear or arrow-heads, hatchets, tomahawks, sc.r.a.pers, &c. Some amount of skill must have been required to obtain the particular shape that was required; but constant practice in this work exclusively must have rendered this task comparatively easy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 15.--Flint Core or Nucleus.]

How, in the next place, were these clipped flints fitted with handles, so as to make hatchets, poniards and knives?

Some of them were fixed at right angles between the two split ends of a stick: this kind of weapon must have somewhat resembled our present hatchets. Others, of an oval shape and circular edge, might have been fastened transversely into a handle, so as to imitate a carpenter's adze. In case of need, merely a forked branch or a piece of split wood might serve as sheath or handle to the flint blade. Flints might also have been fixed as double-edged blades by means of holes cut in pieces of wood, to which a handle was afterwards added.

These flint flakes might, lastly, be fitted into a handle at one end.

The wide-backed knives, which were only sharp on one side, afforded a grasp for the hand without further trouble, and might dispense with a handle. The small flints might also be darted as projectiles by the help of a branch of a tree forming a kind of spring, such as we may see used as a toy by children.

The mere description of these stone hatchets, fitted on to pieces of wood, recall to our mind the natural weapons used by some of the American savages, and the tribes which still exist in a state of freedom in the Isles of Oceania. We allude to the tomahawk, a name which we so often meet with in the accounts of voyages round the world. Among those savage nations who have not as yet bent their necks beneath the yoke of civilisation, we might expect to find--and, in fact, we do find--the weapons and utensils which were peculiar to man in primitive ages. A knowledge of the manners and customs of the present Australian aborigines has much conduced to the success of the endeavours to reconstruct a similar system of manners and customs in respect to man of the quaternary age.

It was with the weapons and implements that we have just described that man, at the epoch of the great bear and mammoth, was able to repulse the attacks of the ferocious animals which prowled round his retreat and often a.s.sailed him (fig. 16).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 16.--Man in the Great Bear and Mammoth Epoch.]

But the whole life of primitive man was not summed up in defending himself against ferocious beasts, and in attacking them in the chase.

Beyond the needs which were imposed upon him by conflict and hunting, he felt, besides, the constant necessity of quenching his thirst. Water is a thing in constant use by man, whether he be civilised or savage. The fluid nature of water renders it difficult to convey it except by enclosing it in bladders, leathern bottles, hollowed-out stumps of trees, plaited bowls, &c. Receptacles of this kind were certain ultimately to become dirty and unfit for the preservation of water; added to this they could not endure the action of fire. It was certainly possible to hollow out stone, so as to serve as a receptacle for water; but any kind of stone which was soft enough to be scooped out, and would retain its tenacity after this operation, is very rarely met with.

Sh.e.l.ls, too, might be used to hold a liquid; but then sh.e.l.ls are not to be found in every place. It was, therefore, necessary to resolve the problem--how far it might be possible to make vessels which would be strong, capable of holding water, and able to stand the heat of the fire without breaking or warping. What was required was, in fact, the manufacture of pottery.

The potter's art may, perhaps, be traced back to the most remote epochs of man. We have already seen, in the introduction to this work, that, in 1835, M. Joly found in the cave of Nabrigas (Lozere), a skull of the great bear pierced with a stone arrow-head, and that by the side of this skull were also discovered fragments of pottery, on which might still be seen the imprint of the fingers which moulded it. Thus, the potter's art may have already been exercised in the earliest period which we can a.s.sign to the development of mankind.

Other causes also might lead us to believe that man, at a very early period of his existence, succeeded in the manufacture of rough pottery.

The clay which is used in making all kinds of pottery, from the very lowest kitchen utensil up to the most precious specimens of porcelain, may be said to exist almost everywhere. By softening it and kneading it with water, it may be moulded into vessels of all shapes. By mere exposure to the heat of the sun, these vessels will a.s.sume a certain amount of cohesion; for, as tradition tells us, the towers and palaces of ancient Nineveh were built entirely with bricks which had been baked in the sun.

Yet the idea of hardening any clayey paste by means of the action of fire is so very simple, that we are not of opinion that pottery which had merely been baked in the sun was ever made use of to any great extent, even among primitive man. Mere chance, or the most casual observation, might have taught our earliest forefathers that a morsel of clay placed near a fire-hearth became hardened and altogether impenetrable to water, that is, that it formed a perfect specimen of pottery. Yet the art, though ancient, has not been universally found among mankind.

Ere long, experience must have taught men certain improvements in the manufacture of pottery. Sand was added to the clay, so as to render it less subject to "flying" on its first meeting the heat of the fire; next, dried straw was mixed with the clay in order to give it more coherence.

In this way those rough vessels were produced, which were, of course, moulded with the hand, and still bear the imprints of the workman's fingers. They were only half-baked, on account of the slight intensity of heat in the furnace which they were then obliged to make use of, which was nothing more than a wood fire, burning in the open air, on a stone hearth.

From these data we give a representation (fig. 17) of the _workshop of the earliest potter_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 17.--The First Potter.]

In the gravel pits in the neighbourhood of Amiens we meet with small globular bodies with a hole through the middle, which are, indeed, nothing but fossil sh.e.l.ls found in the white chalk (fig. 18). It is probable that these stony beads were used to adorn the men contemporary with the diluvial period. The natural holes which existed in them enabled them to be threaded as bracelets or necklaces. This, at least, was the opinion of Dr. Rigollot; and it was founded on the fact that he had often found small heaps of these delicate little b.a.l.l.s collected together in the same spot, as if an inundation had drifted them into the bed of the river without breaking the bond which held them together.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 18.--Fossil Sh.e.l.ls used as Ornaments, and found in the Gravel at Amiens.]

The necklaces, which men and women had already begun to wear during the epoch of the great bear and the mammoth, were the first outbreak of the sentiment of adornment, a feeling so natural to the human species.

The way in which these necklaces were put together is, however, exactly similar to that which we meet with during the present day among savage tribes--a thread on which a few sh.e.l.ls were strung, which was pa.s.sed round the neck.

It has been supposed, from another series of wrought flints, found at Saint-Acheul by Boucher de Perthes, that the men of the epoch of the great bear and mammoth may have executed certain rough sketches of art-workmanship, representing either figures or symbols. Boucher de Perthes has, in fact, found flints which he considered to show representations, with varying degrees of resemblance, of the human head, in profile, three-quarter view, and full face; also of animals, such as the rhinoceros and the mammoth.

There are many other flints, evidently wrought by the hand of man, which were found by Boucher de Perthes in the same quaternary deposits; but it would be a difficult matter to decide their intention or significance.

Some, perhaps, were religious symbols, emblems of authority, &c. The features which enable us to recognise the work of man in these works of antediluvian art, are the symmetry of shape and the repet.i.tion of successive strokes by which the projecting portions are removed, the cutting edges sharpened, or the holes bored out.

The natural colour of all the wrought flints we have just been considering, which bring under our notice the weapons and utensils of man in the earliest epoch of his existence, is a grey which a.s.sumes every tint, from the brightest to the darkest; but, generally speaking, they are stained and coloured according to the nature of the soil from which they are dug out. Argillaceous soils colour them white; ochreous gravels give them a yellowish brown hue. Some are white on one side and brown on the other, probably from having lain between two different beds.