The Antiquity of Man Part 18

2. HERBIVORA.

1. Elephas primigenius (mammoth, two molars).

2. Rhinoceros tichorhinus (Siberian rhinoceros): 1.

3. Equus caballus (horse): 12 to 15.

4. Equus asinus (?) (a.s.s): 1.

5. *Sus scrofa (pig, two incisors).

6. Cervus elaphus (stag): 1.

7. Megaceros hibernicus (gigantic Irish deer): 1.

8. C. capreolus (roebuck): 3 to 4.

9. C. tarandus (reindeer): 10 to 12.

10. Bison europaeus (aurochs): 12 to 15.

The bones of the herbivora were the most numerous, and all those on the outside of the grotto which had contained marrow were invariably split open, as if for its extraction, many of them being also burnt. The spongy parts, moreover, were wanting, having been eaten off and gnawed after they were broken, the work, according to M. Lartet, of hyaenas, the bones and coprolites of which were mixed with the cinders, and dispersed through the overlying soil d. These beasts of prey are supposed to have prowled about the spot and fed on such relics of the funeral feasts as remained after the retreat of the human visitors, or during the intervals between successive funeral ceremonies which accompanied the interment of the corpses within the sepulchre. Many of the bones were also streaked, as if the flesh had been sc.r.a.ped off by a flint instrument.

Among the various proofs that the bones were fresh when brought to the spot, it is remarked that those of the herbivora not only bore the marks of having had the marrow extracted and having afterwards been gnawed and in part devoured as if by carnivorous beasts, but that they had also been acted upon by fire (and this was especially noticed in one case of a cave-bear's bone), in such a manner as to show that they retained in them at the time all their animal matter.

Among other quadrupeds which appear to have been eaten at the funeral feasts, and of which the bones occurred among the ashes, were those of a young Rhinoceros tichorhinus, the bones of which had been, like those of the accompanying herbivora, broken and gnawed by a beast of prey at both extremities.

Outside of the great slab of stone forming the door, not one human bone occurred; inside of it there were found, mixed with loose soil, the remains of as many as seventeen human individuals, besides some works of art and bones of animals. We know nothing of the arrangement of these bones when they were first broken into. M. Lartet inferred at first that the bodies were bent down upon themselves in a squatting att.i.tude, a posture known to have been adopted in most of the sepulchres of primitive times; and he has so represented them in his restoration of the cave: but this opinion he has since retracted. His artist also has inadvertently, in the same drawing, delineated the arched grotto as if it were shaped very regularly and smoothly, like a finished piece of masonry, whereas the surface was in truth as uneven and irregular as are the roofs of all natural grottos.

There was no stalagmite in the grotto, and M. Lartet, an experienced investigator of ossiferous caverns in the south of France, came to the conclusion that all the bones and soil found in the inside were artificially introduced. The substratum b, Figure 25, which remained after the skeletons had been removed, was about 2 feet thick. In it were found about ten detached human bones, including a molar tooth; and M.

Delesse ascertained by careful a.n.a.lysis of one of these, as well as of the bones of a rhinoceros, bear, and some other extinct animals, that they all contained precisely the same proportion of nitrogen, or had lost an equal amount of their animal matter. My friend Mr. Evans, before cited, has suggested to me that such a fact, taken alone, may not be conclusive in favour of the equal antiquity of the human and other remains. No doubt, had the human skeletons been found to contain more gelatine than those of the extinct mammalia, it would have shown that they were the more modern of the two; but it is possible that after a bone has gone on losing its animal matter up to a certain point, it may then part with no more so long as it continues enveloped in the same matrix. If this be so, it follows that bones of very different degrees of antiquity, after they have lain for many thousands of years in a particular soil, may all have reached long ago the maximum of decomposition attainable in such a matrix. In the present case, however, the proof of the contemporaneousness of Man and the extinct animals does not depend simply on the ident.i.ty of their mineral condition. The chemical a.n.a.lysis of M. Delesse is only a fact in corroboration of a great ma.s.s of other evidence.

Mixed with the human bones inside the grotto first removed by Bonnemaison, were eighteen small, round, and flat plates of a white sh.e.l.ly substance, made of some species of c.o.c.kle (Cardium), pierced through the middle as if for being strung into a bracelet. In the substratum also in the interior examined by M. Lartet was found the tusk of a young Ursus spelaeus, the crown of which had been stripped of its enamel, and which had been carved perhaps in imitation of the head of a bird. It was perforated lengthwise as if for suspension as an ornament or amulet. A flint knife also was found in the interior which had evidently never been used; in this respect, unlike the numerous worn specimens found outside, so that it is conjectured that it may, like other a.s.sociated works of art, have been placed there as part of the funeral ceremonies.

A few teeth of the cave-lion, Felis spelaea, and two tusks of the wild boar, also found in the interior, were memorials perhaps of the chase.

No remains of the same animals were met with among the external relics.

On the whole, the bones of animals inside the vault offer a remarkable contrast to those of the exterior, being all entire and uninjured, none of them broken, gnawed, half-eaten, sc.r.a.ped, or burnt like those lying among the ashes on the other side of the great slab which formed the portal. The bones of the interior seem to have been clothed with their flesh when buried in the layer of loose soil strewed over the floor.

In confirmation of this idea, many bones of the skeleton were often observed to be in juxtaposition, and in one spot all the bones of the leg of an Ursus spelaeus were lying together uninjured. Add to this, the entire absence in the interior of cinders and charcoal, and we can scarcely doubt that we have here an example of an ancient place of sepulture, closed at the opening so effectually against the hyaenas or other carnivora that no marks of their teeth appear on any of the bones, whether human or brute.

John Carver, in his travels in the interior of North America in a 1766-68 (chapter 15.), gave a minute account of the funeral rites of an Indian tribe which inhabited the country now called Iowa, at the junction of the St. Peter's River with the Mississippi; and Schiller, in his famous "Nadowessische Todtenklage," has faithfully embodied in a poetic dirge all the characteristic features of the ceremonies so graphically described by the English traveller, not omitting the many funeral gifts which, we are told, were placed "in a cave" with the bodies of the dead. The lines beginning, "Bringet her die letzten Gaben," have been thus translated, truthfully, and with all the spirit of the original, by Sir E. L. Bulwer*:--

"Here bring the last gifts!--and with these The last lament be said; Let all that pleased, and yet may please, Be buried with the dead.

"Beneath his head the hatchet hide, That he so stoutly swung; And place the bear's fat haunch beside-- The journey hence is long!

"And let the knife new sharpened be That on the battle-day Sh.o.r.e with quick strokes--he took but three-- The foeman's scalp away!

"The paints that warriors love to use, Place here within his hand, That he may shine with ruddy hues Amidst the spirit-land."

(* "Poems and Ballads of Schiller.")

If we accept M. Lartet's interpretation of the ossiferous deposits of Aurignac, both inside and outside the grotto, they add nothing to the palaeontological evidence in favour of Man's antiquity, for we have seen all the same mammalia a.s.sociated elsewhere with flint implements, and some species, such as the Elephas antiquus, Rhinoceros hemitoechus, and Hippopotamus major, missing here, have been met with in other places. An argument, however, having an opposite leaning may perhaps be founded on the phenomena of Aurignac. It may--indeed it has been said, that they imply that some of the extinct mammalia survived nearly to our times:

First--Because of the modern style of the works of art at Aurignac.

Secondly--Because of the absence of any signs of change in the physical geography of the country since the cave was used for a place of sepulture.

In reference to the first of these propositions, the utensils, it is said, of bone and stone indicate a more advanced state of the arts than the flint implements of Abbeville and Amiens. M. Lartet, however, is of opinion that they do not, and thinks that we have no right to a.s.sume that the fabricators of the various spear-headed and other tools of the Valley of the Somme possessed no bone instruments or ornaments resembling those discovered at Aurignac. These last, moreover, he regards as extremely rude in comparison with others of the stone period in France, which can be proved palaeontologically, at least by strong negative evidence, to be of subsequent date. Thus, for example, at Savigne, near Civray, in the department of Vienne, there is a cave in which there are no extinct mammalia, but where remains of the reindeer abound. The works of art of the stone period found there indicate considerable progress in skill beyond that attested by the objects found in the Aurignac grotto. Among the Savigne articles, there is the bone of a stag, on which figures of two animals, apparently meant for deer, are engraved in outline, as if by a sharp-pointed flint. In another cave, that of Ma.s.sat, in the department of Ariege, which M. Lartet ascribes to the period of the aurochs, a quadruped which survived the reindeer in the south of France, there are bone instruments of a still more advanced state of the arts, as, for example, barbed arrows with a small ca.n.a.l in each, believed to have served for the insertion of poison; also a needle of bird's bone, finely shaped, with an eye or perforation at one end, and a stag's horn, on which is carved a representation of a bear's head, and a hole at one end as if for suspending it. In this figure we see, says M. Lartet, what may perhaps be the earliest known example of lines used to express shading.

The fauna of the aurochs (Bison europaeus) agrees with that of the earlier lake dwellings in Switzerland, in which hitherto the reindeer is wanting; whereas the reindeer has been found in a Swiss cave, in Mont Saleve, supposed by Lartet to be more ancient than the lake dwellings.

According to this view, the mammalian fauna has undergone at least two fluctuations since the remains of some extinct quadrupeds were eaten, and others buried as funeral gifts in the sepulchral vault of Aurignac.

As to the absence of any marked changes in the physical configuration of the district since the same grotto was a place of sepulture, we must remember that it is the normal state of the earth's surface to be undergoing great alterations in one place, while other areas, often in close proximity, remain for ages without any modification. In one region, rivers are deepening and widening their channels, or the waves of the sea are undermining cliffs, or the land is sinking beneath or rising above the waters, century after century, or the volcano is pouring forth torrents of lava or showers of ashes; while, in tracts hard by, the ancient forest, or extensive heath, or the splendid city continue scatheless and motionless. Had the talus which concealed from view the ancient hearth with its cinders and the ma.s.sive stone portal of the Aurignac grotto escaped all human interference for thousands of years to come, there is no reason to suppose that the small stream at the foot of the hill of Fajoles would have undermined it. At the end of a long period the only alteration might have been the thickening of the talus which protected the loose cinders and bones from waste. We behold in many a valley of Auvergne, within 50 feet of the present river channel, a volcanic cone of loose ashes, with a crater at its summit, from which powerful currents of basaltic lava have poured, usurping the ancient bed of the torrent. By the action of the stream, in the course of ages, vast ma.s.ses of the hard columnar basalt have been removed, pillar after pillar, and much vesicular lava, as in the case, for example, of the Puy Rouge, near Chalucet, and of the Puy de Tartaret, near Nechers.*

(* Scrope's "Volcanoes of Central France" 1858 page 97.)

The rivers have even in some cases, as the Sioule, near Chalucet, cut through not only the basalt which dispossessed them of their ancient channels, but have actually eaten 50 feet into the subjacent gneiss; yet the cone, an incoherent heap of scoriae and spongy ejectamenta, stands unmolested. Had the waters once risen, even for a day, so high as to reach the level of the base of one of these cones--had there been a single flood 50 or 60 feet in height since the last eruption occurred, a great part of these volcanoes must inevitably have been swept away as readily as all traces of the layer of cinders; and the accompanying bones would have been obliterated by the Rodes near Aurignac, had it risen, since the days of the mammoth, rhinoceros, and cave-bear, 50 feet above its present level.

The Aurignac cave adds no new species to the list of extinct quadrupeds, which we have elsewhere, and by independent evidence, ascertained to have once flourished contemporaneously with Man. But if the fossil memorials have been correctly interpreted--if we have here before us at the northern base of the Pyrenees a sepulchral vault with skeletons of human beings, consigned by friends and relatives to their last resting-place--if we have also at the portal of the tomb the relics of funeral feasts, and within it indications of viands destined for the use of the departed on their way to a land of spirits; while among the funeral gifts are weapons wherewith in other fields to chase the gigantic deer, the cave-lion, the cave-bear, and woolly rhinoceros--we have at last succeeded in tracing back the sacred rites of burial, and, more interesting still, a belief in a future state, to times long anterior to those of history and tradition. Rude and superst.i.tious as may have been the savage of that remote era, he still deserved, by cherishing hopes of a hereafter, the epithet of "n.o.ble," which Dryden gave to what he seems to have pictured to himself as the primitive condition of our race,

"as Nature first made Man When wild in woods the n.o.ble savage ran."*

(* "Siege of Granada" Part 1 Act 1 Scene 1.)

CHAPTER 11. -- AGE OF HUMAN FOSSILS OF LE PUY IN CENTRAL FRANCE AND OF NATCHEZ ON THE MISSISSIPPI DISCUSSED.

Question as to the Authenticity of the Fossil Man of Denise, near Le Puy-en-Velay, considered.

Antiquity of the Human Race implied by that Fossil.

Successive Periods of Volcanic Action in Central France.

With what Changes in the Mammalian Fauna they correspond.

The Elephas meridionalis anterior in Time to the Implement-bearing Gravel of St. Acheul.

Authenticity of the Human Fossil of Natchez on the Mississippi discussed.

The Natchez Deposit, containing Bones of Mastodon and Megalonyx, probably not older than the Flint Implements of St. Acheul.

Among the fossil remains of the human species supposed to have claims to high antiquity, and which have for many years attracted attention, two of the most prominent examples are:--

First--"The fossil man of Denise," comprising the remains of more than one skeleton, found in a volcanic breccia near the town of Le Puy-en-Velay, in Central France.

Secondly--The fossil human bone of Natchez, on the Mississippi, supposed to have been derived from a deposit containing remains of Mastodon and Megalonyx. Having carefully examined the sites of both of these celebrated fossils, I shall consider in this chapter the nature of the evidence on which the remote date of their entombment is inferred.

FOSSIL MAN OF DENISE.

An account of the fossil remains, so called, was first published in 1844 by M. Aymard of Le Puy, a writer of deservedly high authority both as a palaeontologist and archaeologist.*

(* "Bulletin de la Societe Geologique de France" 1844, 1845, 1847.)

M. Pictet, after visiting Le Puy and investigating the site of the alleged discovery, was satisfied that the fossil bones belonged to the period of the last volcanic eruptions of Velay; but expressly stated in his important treatise on palaeontology that this conclusion, though it might imply that Man had co-existed with the extinct elephant, did not draw with it the admission that the human race was anterior in date to the filling of the caverns of France and Belgium with the bones of extinct mammalia.*

(* "Traite de Paleontologie" volume 1 1853 page 152.)

At a meeting of the "Scientific Congress" of France, held at Le Puy in 1856, the question of the age of the Denise fossil bones was fully gone into, and in the report of their proceedings published in that year, the opinions of some of the most skilful osteologists respecting the point in controversy are recorded. The late Abbe Croizet, a most experienced collector of fossil bones in the volcanic regions of Central France, and an able naturalist, and the late M. Laurillard, of Paris, who a.s.sisted Cuvier in modelling many fossil bones, and in the arrangement of the museum of the Jardin, declared their opinion that the specimen preserved in the museum of Le Puy is no counterfeit. They believed the human bones to have been enveloped by natural causes in the tufaceous matrix in which we now see them.