Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII.
THE CAVE-MAN AND THE ADVANCE IN CULTURE.
Caverns and rock shelters have been used as habitations by man from the Pleistocene period to the present day, and the traces of this occupation present us with a vivid picture of the social condition of their inhabitants. They also contain the remains of animals which enable us to realise the corresponding changes in the animal life. Just as they afforded shelter to the cave-bear and the hyæna in the Pleistocene age, so in the Prehistoric period did they to the wolf and the bear, and in modern times to the fox and the badger. The results of their exploration,[1] so far as they relate to the early history of mankind, may be conveniently laid before the reader by the light of the newest discoveries, made by the Rev. J. Magens Mello[2] and myself in a group of caverns on the north-east border of Derbyshire, at Cresswell Crags, about five miles to the south-west of Worksop.
Fig. 40.—View of Cresswell Crags, looking east.
The Caves of Cresswell Crags.
The low range of hills, passing from Yorkshire southwards into Leicestershire, composed of magnesian limestone, is traversed here and there by ravines, among which that known as Cresswell Crags (Fig. 40) is one of the most beautiful and picturesque. It is about a third of a mile long, with the vertical cliffs on either side 50 to 80 feet high, overhung with ivy, and relieved by a luxuriant growth of hazel and maple, stunted oak and ash wherever the scree at the bottom, or the cracks in the surface, allow the vegetation to root itself. Through it flows a stream dividing the counties of Derby and Nottingham, which now forms the beautiful sheet of water filling the bottom of the ravine. Caverns and fissures open on it on either side—on the north the Pin Hole, the Robin Hood, and Mother Grundy's Parlour (on the left of Fig. 40), and on the south the Church Hole Cavern.
The Pin Hole.
The Pin Hole, so called from a curious superstitious custom of dropping a pin into a small water-filled hollow in it, and of taking away at the same time one left by a previous visitor,[3] first attracted the attention of the Rev. J. M. Mello in 1875. It runs some 40 or 50 feet horizontally into the rock, and was partially filled with sand containing blocks of stone and large quantities of remains of animals. The sand and pebbles had been introduced by a stream, the large blocks had fallen from the roof in the long course of ages, while the fossil bones and teeth were so scored with teeth-marks as to show that their owners had fallen a prey to some wild beast, which had eaten not merely their flesh but their marrow-containing bones. This creature is proved to have been the spotted hyæna by the numerous teeth and jaws in the cave, ranging from cubhood to old age. The victims identified by Professor Busk belong to the grisly bear, wolf, common fox, bison, reindeer, Irish elk, horse, woolly rhinoceros, and mammoth, to which must be added the arctic fox, so abundant in the Polar regions, and the glutton or wolverine, ranging from the Polar regions as far south as the forests of Germany. The arctic fox is new to Britain, although it has been discovered in the caves of France, Germany, and Switzerland; and the glutton has only been previously met with in the cave of Plas Heaton, near St. Asaph,[4] In these remains we have the materials for forming an idea of the animals living in the woodlands of Yorkshire, Derbyshire, and Nottinghamshire. We may picture to ourselves the horses, bisons, and reindeer trooping down to drink, with here and there an Irish elk, or an unwieldy mammoth or rhinoceros. The drinking-places were the chosen haunts of packs of hyænas, by which even large and powerful creatures, such as grisly bears and rhinoceroses, were overwhelmed, and their remains carried piecemeal into the dens, to be devoured at leisure.
The Robin Hood and Church Hole Caves.
Man is proved to have formed the central figure in this very remarkable assemblage of animals, by the numerous implements and articles left behind in the chambers and passages of the Robin Hood cavern, or that next explored, which were filled with strata in the following order:—
The Three Pleistocene Strata.
Fig. 41.—Strata in Robin Hood Cave.
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21 to 52 | „ | |
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24 to 48 | „ | |
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The floor was covered with a dark layer of earth, some five or six inches in thickness, containing fragments of Roman and mediæval pottery, and other remains of Historic age. Below this (Fig. 41, a), on the left-hand side, was a layer of breccia three feet thick, and sufficiently hard to be blasted only with extreme difficulty. In other parts of the cave it diminished in thickness, and passed into thin stalagmite. It will be observed in the section that it stands in an inverse ratio in regard of thickness to the cave-earth below, b, containing bones, which was present in every part of the cave, and is at its thinnest in the above figure, its average being three to four feet. From this it may be concluded that while the breccia was being formed by calcareous infiltration in one part of the cavern, the upper part of the cave-earth was being accumulated in another, and that therefore, in point of time, the breccia and the upper portion of the cave-earth must be viewed as contemporaneous deposits.
The cave-earth rested upon a red sand, c, containing clay in its lower parts, underneath which was a light-coloured sand with limestone fragments, d, resting on the rocky floor, and devoid of traces of man or of the wild animals. These ossiferous strata are repeated in the Church Hole Cave in the same order. We shall treat them historically, beginning with the oldest and the lowest.
The Lower Red Sand.
The red sand, c, the lowest bone-bearing stratum, contains remains of the same species as those already mentioned from the Pin Hole; the lion, however, must be added to the list, as well as the wild boar and the brown bear. With few exceptions the animal remains are marked by teeth of the hyænas, but they were not so closely eaten up as they usually are in hyæna dens, probably because of the abundance of food in the neighbourhood. Unexpected evidence of the presence of man in the cave at this time is offered by five pebbles of quartzite, used for hammers or pot-boilers, and three splinters of the same material, identical with those so numerous in the cave-earth immediately above. They show that savages of a low order came to the district from time to time, following the chase of the reindeer, bison, mammoth, and other animals found in this stratum, and seeking shelter in the cave. The hyænas were the normal inhabitants, and returned to their dens when man forsook them. In this manner the intimate association of human implements with the tooth-marked fragments left by the hyænas may be explained, not only in this, but in the succeeding strata.
The red sand furnished implements and the same group of animals in the Church Hole, as well as in Mother Grundy's Parlour.
The Middle Cave-Earth.
Fig. 42.—Quartzite Flake, Robin Hood Cave, 12. a. Section.
The second stage in the history of the occupation of the caverns by man is marked by the lower and middle portions of the cave-earth, b, which contained enormous quantities of bones and teeth of animals introduced by the hyænas, as well as bones broken by the hand of man, fragments of charcoal and implements of flint and quartzite amounting to not less than eleven hundred. The quartzite implements had been manufactured out of pebbles, in which advantage had been taken of the smooth surface to form one side of the cutting edge, and some had probably been intended for the preparation of skins, like those in use in 1873 among the Shoshones of north-western Wyoming. "The Shoshones," writes Captain Jones, "though mostly provided with tools of iron and steel of approved patterns, are still to be seen employing as a scraper in the dressing of skins a mere 'teshoa,' consisting of a small worn boulder thinner at one end, and split through the middle in such a manner as to furnish a rough cutting edge on one side. There seems to be a considerable advantage," he adds, "in this over any form of knife or other tool which has as yet reached them from without, and it is probable that it will be retained
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| Fig. 43.—Quartzite Hâche, Robin Hood Cave, 12. a. Section. |
Fig. 44.—Oval Quartzite Implement, Robin Hood Cave, 12. a. Section. |
as long as their present method of preparing hides is in vogue."[5] There were also quartzite flakes (Fig. 42) and implements of the same rude forms as those described from the river gravels. In Fig. 43 we see a pebble chipped into the same form as those found at S. Acheul, and, like them, evidently intended to be held in the hand by the broad end, while in Fig, 44 we see another of a different form also belonging to the drift type, in which a pebble has been chipped to a cutting edge all round. This form is repeated in ironstone, in which material the characteristic oval-shaped hâche (Fig. 45) has also been fashioned. Numerous quartzite pebbles also, with one end chipped to an edge, had probably been used as choppers for breaking up bones.
Fig. 45.—Ironstone Implement, Robin Hood Cave, 11.
Fig. 46.—Flint Scraper, Robin Hood Cave, 12. a, Section.
Flint flakes and chips appear in the lower part of the cave-earth, and scrapers, one of which (Fig. 46) is a flake with its edge carefully and minutely chipped, very like one from Kent's Hole, Fig. 392 of Mr. Evans' work on Ancient Stone Implements. Thus we see that the implements are composed of three materials, of which the quartzite pebbles and the ironstone nodules are to be found in the neighbourhood, while the flint pebbles have been brought a distance, probably from some one of the gravels in the valley of the Idle, a small river flowing into the Humber.
The Upper Cave-Earth and Breccia.
Figs. 47, 48.—Lancecolate Flakes, Breccia, Robin Hood Cave, 12.
In the third period in the Palæolithic history of the cavern, or that of the breccia, a, and the upper part of the cave-earth, the rude tools of quartzite found below are replaced by more highly finished articles of flint brought from a distance, such as lance-heads (Figs. 47, 48), trimmed flakes, and a flint borer (Fig. 49). In the upper cave-earth were simple and double scrapers, and numerous small flakes (Figs. 50, 51). Some of these had obviously been let into a handle of wood or some other perishable material, by which the edge of one side had been protected, while the other was worn away by use (Fig. 52), as is the case with some of those dredged up from the bottom of the Swiss lakes, still remaining in their handles. A fragment of bone, ornamented with the chevron pattern, as well as a bone awl, were also found.
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| Fig. 49.—Flint Borer, Breccia, Robin Hood Cave, 11. | Figs. 50, 51.—Worn Flakes, Breccia, Robin Hood Cave, 11. |
Fig. 52.—Worn Flake, Cave-earth, Church Hole, 11.
The most important discovery, however, made at this horizon is that of a small fragment of rib, with its polished surface ornamented with the incised figure of a horse (Fig. 53); the head, with its eyes, mouth, and nostrils, is admirably drawn, and a series of fine oblique lines stopping at the bend of the back, proves that the animal was hog-maned. It is the first instance of the discovery of the figure of an animal in this country, and it is of high value, as we shall see presently, in bringing the Cave-men of Britain into relation with those of France, Belgium, and Switzerland.
Fig. 53.—Horse, Upper Cave-earth, Robin Hood Cave, 11.
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| Fig. 54.—Bone Needle. Fig. 55.—Bone Awl. Fig. 56.—Notched Bone. Fig. 57.—Rod of Reindeer Antler. Church Hole Cave, 11 | |
In the upper cave-earth of the Church Hole a bone needle (Fig. 54), a bone awl (Fig. 55), a peculiar notched plate of bone (Fig. 56), and a rod of reindeer antler terminating in a scoop (Fig. 57), were discovered in association with similar flint implements.
The results of the exploration of these caves, so far as they bear on the history of man, may be summed up as follows. In the two lower stages, b and c, the hunters are identical with those of the river-drift, while the more highly-finished articles, which imply a higher, and probably a different, social condition, appear in the upper series, and are therefore later in time.
The oldest Fauna in the Cresswell Caves.
Fig. 58.—Upper Canine of Machairodus, Robin Hood Cave, 11.
The association of species in the strata of these caverns does not present any decided points of contrast, although it must be noted that in the Robin Hood cave, the leopard, and the sabre-toothed lion (Machairodus latidens) (Fig. 58), were found in the upper cave-earth, but along with the more common animals. The exploration, however, of a fourth cave, termed Mother Grundy's Parlour, by the Rev. J. M. Mello and myself in November 1878, has revealed an earlier chapter in the history of the caves of Cresswell Crags. Underneath the lower red sand, c, the lowest ossiferous layer in the other caverns, was a layer of red clay, varying in thickness from six inches to three feet, and resting on a ferruginous yellow sand a foot thick. In both these the remains of hyænas were very abundant, bisons were present, and the molar teeth, tusks, and other remains, proved that at least three hippopotami had fallen victims to the hyænas, as well as several rhinoceroses of the small-nosed or leptorhine species of Owen. The last two animals are new to the district. No implements were found at this horizon, and there is therefore no proof that the Palæolithic hunter was a contemporary of these two animals in the district. Nor have the reindeer, the woolly rhinoceros, and the mammoth, so abundant in the other caves of Cresswell Crags, left any trace of their having invaded the district at the time of its occupation by the leptorhine species and the hippopotamus.[6]
This Fauna present in Caves of Yorkshire.
The Caves of Castleton and Matlock.
Fig. 59.—Ossiferous Deposit at Windy Knoll.
A. Yellow loam without bones, 4 feet.
B. Yellow clay with blocks of stone and bones, 8 feet.
C. Clayey debris, 6 feet.
The same group as those from the lower red sand, middle cave-earth, and upper breccia, has recently been met with in the caves of Derbyshire, at Matlock Bath, by Mr. Robert Law,[8] and in the Peak cavern in a fissure at Windy Knoll, near Castleton. From the last Mr. Rooke Pennington[9] and myself obtained no less than 6800 specimens, irrespective of fragments thrown aside, belonging principally to the bison and reindeer, together with bears, wolves, foxes, and hares. This vast accumulation of bones, in an area not more than 25 by 18 feet, had been formed in the bottom of a swallow hole (Fig. 59), used as a drinking-place by migratory bodies of animals. It is about 1600 feet above the sea, at a point in the Pennine chain where the magnificent
ravine of the Wynnetts and the pass by Mam Tor lead from the vale of Hope and Castleton into the plains of Cheshire and Lancashire, and it evidently marks the route by which the animals passed to and fro from one set of pastures to another, after the manner of the bison in North America and the reindeer in Siberia.
Migration of Bisons and Reindeer.
The bisons in North America, so rapidly disappearing—like the Red Indian—at the advance of the white man, are described as forming herds of enormous size, going wherever instinct leads them in search of pastures, "now through the dark gorges of the Rocky Mountains, now trailing into the valleys of the Rio del Norte, now pouring down the wooded slopes of the Saskatchewan." "Nothing could stop them on their march; great rivers stretched before them with steep overhanging banks, and beds treacherous with quicksands and shifting bar; huge chasms and earth rents, the work of subterranean forces, crossed their line of march, but still the countless thou- sands swept on. Through day and night the earth trembled beneath their tramp, and the air was filled with the deep bellowing of their unnumbered throats. Crowds of wolves and flocks of vultures dogged and hovered along their way, for many a huge beast half sunk in quicksand, or bruised and maimed at the foot of some precipice, marked their line of march like the wrecks lying spread behind a routed army."[10] The bison are also described, by the Northern Boundary Commissioners, as wintering in vast herds in the fertile grass lands of Dakota. They were shot from the waggons with pistols, and pressed in such numbers upon the party that the march was stopped. In every pond their skeletons were to be seen, and in one ravine they lay five deep. Grisly bears, wolves, and foxes abounded in the neighbourhood.[11]
Admiral von Wrangel[12] gives a graphic account of the migration of reindeer observed in his journey through the stony Tundra, near the river Baranicha in north- eastern Siberia. "I had hardly finished the observation," he writes, "when my whole attention was called to a highly interesting, and to me a perfectly novel spectacle. Two large migrating bodies of reindeer passed us at no great distance. They were descending the hills from north-west and crossing the plain on their way to the forests, where they spend the winter. Both bodies of deer extended farther than the eye could reach, and formed a compact mass narrowing towards the front. They moved slowly and majestically along, their broad antlers resembling a moving wood of leafless trees. Each body was led by a deer of unusual size, which my guides assured me was always a female. One of the herds was stealthily followed by a wolf, who was apparently watching for an opportunity of seizing any one of the younger and weaker deer which might fall behind the rest; but on seeing us he made off in another direction. The other column was followed at some distance by a large black bear, who, however, appeared only intent on digging out a mouse's nest every now and then—so much so that he took no notice of us."
Bisons in District in Summer, Reindeer in Winter.
We can readily picture to ourselves, by the aid of these two narratives, the vast migratory bodies of bison and reindeer, a sea of tossing manes and horns, or a moving forest of antlers, passing upwards by the great gaping chasm, overhung by the Peak Castle, to the heights dividing the tributaries of the river Trent from those of the Dee and the Mersey, followed by the wild beasts as in North America and Northern Asia. The bison and reindeer, however, now are not known to inhabit the same country at the same time, and therefore we cannot suppose that this was the case in Britain in the Pleistocene age. The difficulty may be explained by the supposition that they occupied the district at different seasons, which, as we have already seen, were more sharply contrasted than they are at the present time. An examination of their bones and teeth proves that the bisons were here with calves not more than three or four months old, that is to say, within three or four months of calving time in May, in other words, in the summer and the autumn. The remains of the young reindeer, on the other hand, are very scarce, and only one milk-molar, the last in the series, possesses imperfect fangs; from which it may be concluded that they were not in the district in the summer and autumn—their calving time, according to Sir John Eichardson,[13] also being May. They were, therefore, here in the winter time, and perhaps in the early spring. This undesigned piece of evidence is a strong confirmation of the truth of the views held by Sir Charles Lyell and myself that the association of animals, not now found together in Pleistocene deposits, is due to seasonal migrations.
Man present with Hippopotamus in Cave of Pont Newydd.
Palæolithic man has left no traces of his presence in the caves of Castleton and Matlock. They have, however, been met with in several caverns in Wales, such as those of Pembrokeshire and Monmouthshire in the south, and in that of Pont Newydd,[14] near St. Asaph in North Wales. In the latter a human molar tooth has been found, as well as a quartzite implement, and rude splinters and chips of quartzite, of the same type as those of the red sand in the caves of Cresswell. The pebbles of which these are made have been obtained from the glacial deposits in the neighbourhood. We may therefore conclude with Professor Hughes, that the Palæolithic hunter was here after the district was forsaken by the glaciers and the sea, or in other words, in post-glacial times, as in the parallel case offered by the river-deposits of Bedford and Hoxne. It must also be remarked that the leptorhine rhinoceros and the hippopotamus, as well as the straight-tusked elephant (E. antiquus), bear, bison, reindeer, and horse, are found with the quartzite implements in the Pont Newydd cave, which may therefore be classified with those of Yorkshire and the lower strata in Mother Grundy's Parlour.
With this exception, the association of traces of man with the remains of hippopotamus has, as yet, not been observed in any bone caves either in this country or on the Continent. The presence of the leptorhine rhinoceros, hippopotamus, and straight-tusked elephant, probably marks the earliest phase of the occupation of the caves of Europe by the Palæolithic hunter.
Palæolithic Men of the Caves of Somerset.
Fig. 60.—Flint implements, Wookey Hole, near Wells, 11.
The caverns of the Mendip Hills,[15] which have furnished a rich series of remains to the Rev. D. Williams, Messrs. Beard, Ashford Sanford, and myself, have presented in Wookey Hole traces of the Palæolithic man of the higher strata of the Cresswell caves, in several well-trimmed flakes and well-chipped oval implements of flint (Fig. 60), along with the same group of animals.
Palæolithic Men of Kent's Hole.
Fig. 61.—Flint Hâche, Breccia, Kent's Hole, 12.
The first evidence that there were in the caverns of this country two distinct sets of Palæolithic implements, is that presented by Kent's Hole, so ably explored under the superintendence of Mr. Pengelly.[16] In the lowest strata of crystalline breccia are rude implements of the River-drift type (Fig. 61), in association with the remains of bear, out of one canine tooth of which animal a flake had been manufactured, presenting all the ordinary conchoidal fracture of flint. It had been made after the tooth had become fossilised. "The implements found in the breccia," Mr. Pengelly remarks, were "exclusively of flint and chert. They were much more rudely formed, more massive, less symmetrical in outline, and made by operating not on flakes but directly on nodules, of which portions of the original surface generally remained, and which were probably derived from supra-cretaceous gravels existing in great volume between Torquay, and Newton Abbot, about four miles from the cavern. It is obvious, however, that even such tools could not be made without the dislodgment of flakes and chips, some of which would be capable of being utilised, and accordingly a few remnants of this kind were met with in the breccia, but they were all of a very rude simple character, and do not appear to have been improved by being chipped."[17]
Fig. 62.—Oval Implement, Cave-earth, Kent's Hole, 12.
Above the breccia is the cave-earth, in which flint implements are by far more numerous and of a higher form, some being carefully chipped all round and oval, as in Fig. 62, while others are lanceolate (see Figs. 47, 48) and may have been intended for spear or javelin heads)
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| Fig. 63.—Trimmed Flake, Cave-earth, Kent's Hole, 12. | Fig. 64.—Hammer-Stone, Cave-earth Kent's Hole, 12. |
Figs. 65, 66.—Harpoon-heads, Cave-earth, Kent's Hole, 11.
There were also carefully-trimmed flakes (Fig. 63) and scrapers, both single and double, and hammer stones (Fig. 64). A bone needle also was met with, and bone awls, and two harpoons of reindeer antler, the one barbed on one side (Fig. 65), and the other on both sides (Fig. 66). With the exception of the two last, these implements are identical with those described in the preceding pages from the breccia and upper cave-earth of (the Cresswell caverns. The two deposits in Kent's Hole are separated from each other by a sheet of crystalline stalagmite, in some places nearly 12 feet thick, "formed after the materials of the breccia were deposited, but before the introduction of the cave-earth commenced. After the stalagmite just mentioned, it was in extensive parts of the cavern broken up by some natural agency, and much of the latter, if not of both, was dislodged and carried out of the cavern before the first instalment of cave-earth was deposited."[18] We may therefore conclude that the interval was long enough to allow of great physical changes in the district, by which the contents of the caverns were afiected. An[19] implement of the River-drift type, similar to Fig. 61, has been discovered in the famous cave at Brixham, explored also under the superintendence of Mr. Pengelly. And it may most probably be referred to the same early stage as those from the breccia in Kent's Hole.
The River-drift Men preceded the Cave-men in the British Caves.
From these observations it is evident that the River-drift men inhabited the caves of Devonshire, Derbyshire, and Nottinghamshire, in an early stage of the history of caverns, and that after an interval, to be measured in Kent's Hole by the above-mentioned physical changes, the Cave-men found shelter in the same places. The former also followed the chase in the valley of the Elwy and the vale of Clwydd in North Wales, and the latter found ample food in the numerous reindeer, horses, and bisons then wandering over the plains extending from the Mendip Hills to the Quantocks, and the low fertile tract now covered by the estuary of the Severn and the Irish Sea (Fig. 32). When all these facts are taken into consideration, it is difficult to escape Mr. Pengelly's conclusion that the two sets of implements represent two distinct social states, of which the ruder is by far the more ancient.[20]
The River-drift Men preceded the Cave-men in the Caves of France.
These two stages of culture have been recently proved by the researches of Dr. M. J. Parrot to be equally represented in Central France. In the Grotte de l'Eglise at Excideuil (Dordogne)[21] the strata containing the remains of Man were in the following order:—1st, At the bottom of the cave a yellow sand contained rough choppers and rude flakes "of jasper," and other simple forms of the same kind as those in the red sand of the Cresswell Caves, and like them unaccompanied by any higher forms. They were associated with the bones of the bear and bison, the former of which, as we have seen in the preceding paragraphs, is characteristic of the lower breccia in Kent's Hole. 2d, Above this was a layer of red earth, with implements of the same sort as those below, and composed of the same material, but accompanied here by a few simply chipped implements of the type of Moustier. At this horizon the reindeer, cave-bear, and horse were discovered. 3d, A layer of black earth underneath a sheet of stalagmite formed the upper layer, in which the implements are of a far higher order: those of flint consisting of flakes, saws, and scrapers, with finely-chipped lance-heads and arrow-heads, similar to those from Cresswell Crags (Figs. 47, 48) and Solutré; and those of bone and antler being awls and arrow-heads. At this horizon implements of jasper were exceedingly rare, a core and an arrow-head being the only two mentioned by the discoverer. The animals used for food at this time were principally reindeer, but there were also the remains of horses, a large ox, and a carnivore.
These three stages form an exact parallel to those of Cresswell, and imply that in Central France as in England the most ancient cave-dwellers were in a lower state of civilisation than their successors, and that the sequence of events in England, established by the caves of Cresswell and Kent's Hole, applies equally well to the caverns of the Continent. The ruder and more ancient stage of culture is identical with that of the River-drift men, while the higher and newer belongs to that of the Cave-men properly so called.
The Subdivisions of the Palæolithic Age proposed by M. de Mortillet.
Before we treat of this higher civilisation it will be necessary to give an outline of the classification of the remains from the caverns and river-beds given by the eminent archæologist M. de Mortillet,[22] by whom they are divided into four stages:
1. That of the river-drift of St. Acheul, or the "Epoque Achculéen," defined in the last chapter as the age of the River-drift man.
2. That of the cave of Moustier, or the "Epoque Moustérien," characterised by the presence of flakes worked on one side only, and, according to Mr. Evans, of choppers and ovato-lanceolate implements, somewhat like those of the preceding stage No. 1. In England implements of these forms occur in the cave-earth of Cresswell Crags, of Kent's Hole, and of Wookey Hole.
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| Fig. 67.—Flint Arrow-head, Laugerie-Haute, 11. | Fig. 68.—Flint Javelin-head, Laugerie-Haute, 11. | Fig. 69.—Bone Needle, La Madelaine, 11. |
3. That of the "station" or camping-ground of Solutré,[23] or the "Epoque Solutrien," in which elaborately chipped lance-heads (Figs 67, 68), and leaf-shaped implements, and scrapers are found, similar to those figured from the upper strata in the Cresswell Caves.
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| Figs. 70, 71.—Harpoon-heads of Antler, La Madelaine, 11. | Fig. 72.—Harpoon-head, Gorge d'Enfer, 11. |
4. That of the rock-shelter of La Madelaine in the Dordogne, or the "Epoque Magdalenien," characterised by the numerous saws, scrapers, and borers of flint, and by a great quantity of implements of various sorts fashioned out of bone and antler, such as bone needles (Fig. 69), harpoons (Figs. 70, 71, 72), and sketches upon antler, bone, stone, and ivory, such as those figured in the following pages. This stage is characterised by the development of the manufacture of bone implements and the decay of that of stone.
These divisions, to a large extent based on the improvements observable in the various sets of implements, are not sharply defined from each other, the first one excepted, and cannot, in Mr. Evans' opinion, at present be regarded as absolutely established.[24] The men who used elaborately chipped lance-heads of the "Epoque Solutrien" used implements identical with those of Moustier, as well as articles of bone and antler like those of La Madelaine, and were also acquainted with the art of engraving the figures of animals. With regard to the two last divisions which are represented in the valley of the Vezère, the view of Professor Edward Lartet[25] that they belong to the same phase of the human period, is probably true, since there is but little difference between the animals found in them, and since the difference in the human implements may be accounted for by the unequal distribution of articles in use at the same time, as well as by there having been different centres of manufacture. On examining the principal collections in France, it seems to me that this explanation may be extended so as to cover the "Epoque Moustérien" as well as those of Solutré and La Madelaine, and I am able to recognise merely local differences, due probably to tribal isolation, or to abundance of stone or antler, between the contents of the caves of the three last stages. The differences are of the same order as those observed by Arctic explorers among various tribes of Eskimos, some of which are rich and admirably equipped for the battle of life, others poor, and without the higher forms of implements and weapons: but nevertheless all their implements are to be referred to the same race, and to be grouped together as belonging to the same stage of culture.
Cave-Men throughout Europe in the same stage of Culture.
Nor are there any periods in the history of the Palæolithic caverns of Belgium,[26] Germany, or Switzerland, well defined by different implements or by different mammalian species. In them the characteristic implements of the three later ages of M. de Mortillet occur in the same strata, in association with the remains of the same animals, and therefore must be referred to the same people in the same stage of culture as that observed in the caves of France and Britain.
Chronological Sequence based on the Mammalia unsatisfactory.
Nor does an appeal to the variations presented by the fauna aid us in making a chronological sequence, as I have shown in my work on Cave-hunting, for the hunters in each district would live on whatever animals they could catch, and the abundance of reindeer in one cave, as compared with that of horses or cave-bears in another, implies merely a local variation in the fauna. One Eskimo camping ground of the present time is covered with bones of walrus and seal, and another with the remains of musk sheep and reindeer, according to the prevalence of those animals in their respective districts. The remains of the late Pleistocene mammalia occur in the caves of France and of Britain in such an intimate association with the works of man, that no classification based on the mammalia is possible. This view, it must be remembered, is held also by M. de Mortillet.
Range of the Cave-Men compared with that of the River-drift Men.
The remains of the Cave-men are found throughout the whole of France, and are remarkably abundant in the caverns of the Pyrenees. In Belgium they have been proved by the discoveries of M. Dupont[27] to be equally abundant in the valleys of the Meuse and of the Lesse. In Switzerland they have been met with in the caverns of Veyrier[28] on the Salève, of Thayingen[29] near Schaffhausen, and in various caverns in Germany as far south as Styria.[30] In Germany, as Professor Fraas points out, the Cave-men frequently hunted the grisly bear as well as the extinct cave-bear. As yet they are unknown in the caves south of the Alps and the Pyrenees and north of a line passing east and west from Derbyshire through Belgium. Thus we see that their range is limited as compared with that of the men of the river-drift, and it coincides with the middle zone represented in Fig. 24, in which the remains of northern and southern animals occur. Men inhabited caves outside these limits in the Pleistocene age, such as those of Palermo, in which Dr. Falconer[31] discovered flint flakes in association with the pigmy hippopotamus (H. Pentlandi), but they did not use the implements characteristic of the Cave-men as described in this chapter.
From this distribution of the implements it is evident that the Cave-man belongs neither to the southern group of the Pleistocene animals (see Fig. 24), nor to the temperate which found its way over the mountain barriers into Spain, Italy, and Greece. On the other hand, the River-drift man must be considered as a member either of the temperate or southern fauna of Europe, because his remains are met with in the regions of the Mediterranean, north of those mountain barriers. This difference in the range is an important link in the chain of evidence, by which it will be shown that the men of the River-drift differed in race from those of the caves. Before this can be examined we must give an outline of the civilisation of the Cave-men.
The Civilisation of the Cave-Men.—Dwellings.
The numerous remains in caverns in the area defined in the preceding paragraphs, and the comparison of the implements with those of lowly civilised tribes now living, enable us to throw our minds back into those remote times, and realise the life and surroundings of the Cave-man. We will first deal with his dwellings.
Fig. 73.—Section across the Valley of the Vezère, through the Rock-Shelter of Cro-Magnon.
The place for an encampment was generally chosen either under the shelter of a rock or at the mouth of a cavern, and in some cases, as, for example, in that of Cro-Magnon[32] in the valley of the Vezère (Fig. 73), the same spot was inhabited from time to time for a long series of years, until it was no longer habitable from the accumulations on the floor. In Fig. 74, the letters B, D, F, H, and J, represent successive deposits of charcoal, flint implements, and broken bones, which have resulted from successive occupations, continued until the débris reached to within about a foot of the roof. This section is further interesting because it shows the true relation of the human bones, b d, to the Palæolithic refuse-heaps. It will be seen that they rest at the further end of the cave in débris overlying the refuse-heaps, and that therefore they are later than the Palæolithic occupation of the cavern, to which they are considered to belong by M. Louis Lartet and the editors of Reliquiæ Aquitanicæ.
Fig. 74.—Detailed Section of Cro-Magnon.
These caverns and rock-shelters are to be looked upon as places of periodic resort, like the winter huts of the Eskimos, between Eschscholtz Bay and the river Mackenzie. That this was the case, at all events in Great Britain, is proved by the intimate association of the gnawed bones of animals brought in by the hyænas, with the traces of human occupation which has been pointed out in the Cresswell caves. When a cave was deserted by man, it was immediately taken possession of by the wild beasts whom he had temporarily dislodged.
The Cave-men did not always use caves and rock-shelters for their camps. The large accumulations of refuse at Solutré[33] in the valley of the Saone, above Lyons, and the implements at Chez-Pourré, in the commune of Brive,[34] show that encampments were found in the open air close to water at the same spot year after year. The habit of camping in the open air must have been the rule rather than the exception, because caverns and rock-shelters are only met with in very limited areas, and generally at some distance from the most fertile plains, where game would be most aburidant. The rarity of subaerial refuse-heaps compared with those in caves and under rocks may be explained by the greater liability of the former to be destroyed by the rain, frost, and other atmospheric agents, even wearing away or rearranging the surface soil. Probably the huts were formed of branches of trees, or of skins, like the summer tents of the Eskimos; and the same materials may have been used for making the caves and rock-shelters more comfortable.
Domestic Pursuits.—No Pottery.
From these refuse-heaps we can make out the domestic pursuits of the Cave-men as distinguished from their hunting, fowling, and fishing. The game brought home to the rock-shelter or cavern was either roasted or cooked by means of hot stones or "pot-boilers." Flint flakes were used for dividing the meat, and the bones were broken for the sake of the marrow. Some of the scoops (Fig. 56) have probably been used as marrow spoons. The vessels for holding water were probably made of wood, and skin, and horn, of which last material the bison, the urus, and the musk sheep would offer a plentiful supply, but of these perishable substances no trace has been preserved. They may also have made vessels for containing fluids after the manner of the Eskimos by cementing pieces of stone together with a mixture of fat and lamp-black. There is no reason to suppose that they used vessels of pottery, since no pot-sherds have been discovered in any of the refuse-heaps which have been carefully explored in France, Germany, Switzerland, and Britain. The round-bottomed vase from the Trou du Frontal, considered by M. Dupont to imply that the art of pottery was known at this time, is of the same fashion as those of the Neolithic age from the pile dwellings of Switzerland, and probably belongs to that age. The potsherds found in the cave of Kuhlock are also of the same make as the Neolithic pottery, and the same remark applies equally to most if not all the cases of its occurrence quoted by Mr. J. C. Southall[35] from France, such as Bruniquel and others. Had the Cave-men been acquainted with the potter's art, there is every reason to believe that traces of it would be abundant in every refuse-heap, as they were subsequently in those of all pottery-using peoples, a fragment of pottery or of burnt clay being as little liable to destruction as a fragment of bone or antler. The absence of Palæolithic pottery in the French caves is confirmed by the wide experience of MM. Massenat, Lalande, and Cartailhac, who write as follows: "La poterie, nous saisissons l'occasion de le dire n'a jamais été trouvée par nous dans les couches franchement intacte de l'âge du renne. Elle accompagne constamment, au contraire les ossements d'animaux domestiques, elle est l'œuvre des populations de l'âge de la pierre polie et sa présence dans un gisement quaternaire (palæolithic) est pour nous une signe de remaniement."[36]
Means of obtaining Fire.
In all probability the Cave-man obtained fire by the friction of one piece of hard wood upon another, as is now the custom among many savage tribes. Sometimes, however, as in the Trou de Chaleux, quoted by M. Dupont,[37] he may have obtained a light by the friction of a bit of flint against a piece of iron pyrites, as is usual with the Eskimos of the present day.
Implement-Making.—Sewing.
The occupations which centred then, as now, round the hearth, were for the men the manufacture of articles for the chase, and for the women the preparation of food and clothing. Flint and chert pebbles were collected and fashioned into various articles (see preceding figures in this chapter), near the fires;—into spear-heads, such as (Figs. 47, 48), arrow-heads, flakes, borers, and saws for cutting antlers and bones;—into needles, spear-heads, and harpoons. The skins of the wild animals were prepared for clothing and other purposes, and sewn together with a thread of reindeer sinew.[38] This was most probably the duty of the women. Some of the outlines incised on the antlers in the caves of Auvergne represent the skin stretched out after it had been removed from the body of the animal, the incision being made, as at the present time, from the lower jaw to the tail, and the legs and tail being preserved.[39] The fashioning of wooden handles for the implements with their imperfectly edged tools must have occupied a large portion of the time of the men in the intervals of hunting.
Dress and Ornaments.
Fig. 75.—Glove on perforated Canine of Bear, Duruthy Cave, 11.
Their clothes were made of the furs of the various animals, reindeer, bisons, horses, and others, sewn together with sinews like those of the Eskimos, and their arms and hands were protected by long gloves with three or four fingers. Sketches of these incised on bone and antler have been discovered in caves in Auvergne and in the Pyrenees (Fig. 75). They probably painted their faces with red oxide of iron, lumps of which have been found in the English, French, and Swiss caves, and they wore amulets and necklaces made of perforated shells, both fossil and recent, of bone ivory, and teeth. Some of these were composed of canines of bear and lion (Fig. 76), of which no less than forty were found in the cave of Duruthy variously engraved (see Figs. 75, 76, 82, 84), forming a magnificent trophy of the chase.
Fig. 76.—Tooth of Cave-lion, Duruthy Cave. 11.
Hunting.
The animals hunted by the Cave-men in northern and central France were principally reindeer, horses, and bisons, and occasionally mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, cave-bears, uri, musk sheep, and ibexes. The hunters were armed with spears tipped with flint and bone (Figs. 47, 48, 63, 65, 66, 68), with daggers of reindeer antler, some bearing beautifully-carved handles, as well as with bows and arrows. The accompanying sketch,[40] incised on a piece of antler, left behind by one of the hunters in his dwelling at Laugerie Basse (Fig. 77), and figured by M. Massenat, shows that the game was sometimes stalked. A large ox is represented feeding, with his head down, while behind a naked human figure, with dishevelled hair and beard, has crept up, and is in the act of throwing a spear. The victim is considered by M. Massenat to be a bison, but the double curvature, as well as the length of the horns, prove that it was the urus,
Fig. 77.—The Hunting of the Ursus, Duruthy Cave. 12
an animal which was hunted in the forests of Aachen (Aix la Chapelle) by the Emperor Charles the Great in the ninth century after Christ. Another hunting scene[41] has been preserved in the rock-shelter of La Madelaine, in which the hunter (Fig. 78), also naked, but standing up, is in the act of striking a horse with something in his right hand which is probably intended for a spear. He has evidently surprised a herd, and the head of the horse which he is attacking has its ears pricked up in a very significant fashion. The figure to the left is probably an eel. On the other side of the rounded antler two bisons' heads are drawn with remarkable spirit, their simply curved short horns offering a great contrast to those of the urus of the preceding figure. Although in both these sketches the hunter is represented naked, it is impossible to suppose that he did not use the skins of animals for clothing in a climate such as that of France and Britain at the time. In the winter, at all events, we must picture him clad in furs.
Fig. 78.—The Hunting of Bisons and Horses, La Madelaine, 12.
The game was also probably caught sometimes by means of sharp-pointed stakes, by which the animals were impaled. One of these scenes is represented in a sketch from La Madelaine.[42] At other times they were entrapped between barriers, either natural or artificial. In Fig. 79 a group of reindeer is represented, of which two are walking, while three others lie on their backs
Fig. 79.—Group of Reindeer.
with their heads in the air. This sketch is probably intended to show a successful hunt in which a portion of a herd was captured. Sometimes the hunter ran great risk in the attack of the larger animals, and in one figure engraved on a fragment of reindeer antler in the refuse-heap of Laugerie Basse, he has conveyed to us in a few masterly lines the impression made upon his mind by the charge of an elephant, trunk in air, and with mouth wide open (Fig. 80).
Fig. 80.—Mammoth charging, Laugerie Basse, 11.
The Cave-men dared also to attack the wild beasts which were their rivals in the chase. In a sketch in the caves of Dordogne, representing the outlines of a glutton,[43] we have evidence that that animal was familiar to them in Auvergne; and in another, from the cave of Massat (Arriège) (Fig. 81), that the cave-bear was equally known to them in the valleys of the Eastern Pyrenees. Vast quantities of broken and split bones in the German caves show that the latter animal formed a large portion of his food in Germany. Among the
Fig. 81.—Cave-Bear incised on fragment of Schist, Bas-Massat, 11.
perforated teeth found in the cave of Duruthy are canines of the great cave-lion (Fig. 67). The body must have been cut up, and probably also to a large extent eaten on the spot after the capture of the larger game. For this reason the remains of the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros would naturally be rare in refuse-heaps composed of bones of smaller animals, and to a far less extent of those of the larger, which from their bulk could not be carried. The portions carried off would be cut away from the larger bones. We can picture to ourselves the camp round the carcases, and the fires kindled not merely to cook the flesh, but to keep away beasts of prey attracted by the scent of blood. The tribe assembled round, and the dark trunks of the oaks or Scotch firs lighted up by the blaze, with hyænas lurking in the background, are worthy of the brush of a future Rembrandt. No dogs were used in the chase, and there is no trace of any other domestic animal.
Fig. 82.—Seal incised on Canine of Bear, Duruthy Cave, 11.
The Cave-men depended mainly for their sustenance on the supply of reindeer and the other animals mentioned above; but when they had an opportunity they attacked the animals living in the sea. In the cave of Duruthy, explored by MM. Louis Lartet and Chaplain Duparc, near Sorde, in the valley of the Gave d'Oloron, in the Western Pyrenees, the figure of a seal is engraved on the canine of a cave-bear, which has been perforated for use as an ornament (Fig. 82), and a rounded fragment of antler from Laugerie Basse carries the outlines of a whale (Fig. 83), either the cachalot or sperm whale (Cetodon macrocephalus), or possibly the black fish (Physeter tursio),[44] in which the large head and the position of the pectoral and dorsal fins are very well indicated. The seals were probably stalked, and the whale was caught on the nearest coast in the Bay of Biscay. We can realise the scene of gluttony which followed the slaughter of whales from the behaviour of the Eskimos under similar circumstances.
Fig. 83.—Whale incised on piece of Antler, Laugerie Basse, 11.
The absence of the remains of seals and whales from the refuse-heaps now within a short distance of the sea is due to the fact that in the late Pleistocene age the Atlantic seaboard was situated far to the west of its present position (see Maps, Figs. 24, 32). The refuse-heaps accumulated near the ancient shore are now submerged between the one hundred fathom line and the present coast. There, in all probability, they consisted of as large a percentage of seals, whales, and walruses, as those of the littoral Eskimos of the present day. The hunters who engraved these marine animals carried their sketches along with them in their migration inland, in the one case as far as Oloron, and in the other into Auvergne.
Fowling.
The Cave-men were expert fowlers, as is shown by the many kinds of birds identified by Professor Alfonse Milne-Edwards,[45] from the refuse-heaps of Central and Southern France. Among them the most important are the snowy owl, now mainly confined to the cold climate of the north, where it feeds on lemmings and various small birds; the willow grouse, also an Arctic species; the ptarmigan, now living in the High Alps and Pyrenees as well as in the Arctic regions; the capercailzie and the grey partridge, the wild duck, and an extinct kind of crane (Grus cinerea). A group of birds, probably ducks, unable to fly, and scuttling away as fast as possible, is represented on a rounded lance-head from La Madelaine.[46] The moulting season is the chief time for fowling among the Eskimos of the present day. The birds were probably shot with arrows or taken with snares, or with barbed spears, such as those of the Eskimos (see Fig. 90). Some of the barbed arrow or spear points, so commonly found in the caves of France, have most probably been employed for this purpose, as well as for fishing (Figs. 65, 66, 70, 71, 72).
Fishing.
Fig. 84.—Pike incised on Canine of Bear, Duruthy Cave, 11.
The fishes[47] which were caught with barbed spears of the kind noticed above, were the salmon, trout, carp, bream, dace, chub, and pike, of which one engraving has been handed down to us on a canine tooth of a bear (Fig. 84) in the refuse-heap in the Duruthy cave.
The Art of the Cave-men—Engraving.
The Cave-men have left behind, as we have seen in the last pages, more vivid pictures of their life and times than those founded upon implements and weapons and the associated animal remains. Fortunately for us they employed the intervals of leisure from the chase in engraving upon bone, antler, and more rarely on ivory and stone, the hunting scenes which most vividly impressed themselves upon their memory. In the caves at Cresswell the figure of a horse (Fig. 53), delicately incised on a fragment of rib, is the first trace of the art of design in this country, proving that the faculty of representing animals, so wonderfully developed among the Cave-men of France, was shared also by those of Britain. The horse, it will be observed, has an upright or hog mane, and a large coarse head. The animal is frequently represented in a similar manner on bone and antler in the caves of France. In La Madelaine, for example,
Fig. 85.—Horses incised on Antler, La Madelaine, 11.
two horses (Fig. 85) are seen, with hog-manes and large heads, and with tails rough and tangled. Sometimes their heads are small and the necks long, as in those found in the Kesslerloch cavern. A hunting scene, in which horses are the victims, has been already brought before the reader in treating the methods employed for taking the game (Fig. 78), as well as two others, in which the game consists of uri and reindeer (Figs. 77, 79). The last animal, as might be expected from the abundance of its bones in the refuse-heaps, was more often depicted by the hunter than any other. Sometimes it is drawn in groups, as in Fig. 79, and in others singly. In Fig. 86 we see a buck, with its head down grazing, without thought of the hunter, who has handed down the attitude to us on a portion of antler found in the cave of Kesslerloch,[48] as the highest example of Palæolithic art as yet discovered. It is the only attempt at representing the herbage as well as the animal.
Fig. 86.—Reindeer incised on Antler, Kesslerloch. 23
The outlines of other animals, such as the stag, the great Irish elk with its huge palmated antlers, the ibex with its gracefully recurved horns, and the mammoth, have been met with in the caves of France, besides the bisons, seals, and birds already mentioned. In the figure of the mammoth the artist has seized the salient points with wonderful fidelity (Fig. 22); the spiral curvature of the tusks, the long hairy ears, and the long mane, which, had it not been for the discovery of the carcases preserved in the frozen morasses of Siberia, we should say were fictitious, because they are unlike those of any living species of elephant. In another example already mentioned (Fig. 80) the head of a charging elephant is most admirably engraved. The head of a brown bear is represented on a piece of antler from the cave of Bas-Massat, and on a fragment of schist from the same cave are the well-defined outlines of a species probably identical with the great cave-bear (Fig. 81). Sometimes the outlines of skins stretched out to dry are recognisable, and more rarely those of flowers and leaves (Fig. 91). The last occur in the caves of Belgium, France, and Switzerland. The human figure was but rarely sketched by the Cave-men, and that given in Fig. 77, in the hunting of the urus, is the most artistic as yet discovered.
Some of the vertical incised lines, and more especially those in the sketch on a piece of antler from the rock-shelter of Laugerie Basse, described by the Abbé Landesque,[49] may show that the inhabitants of Europe, in the late Pleistocene age, had their bodies more densely covered with hair than is usually the case at the present time. The protection from the cold which we and our ancestors for countless generations have obtained by the use of clothes, would render a natural clothing of hair unnecessary, and produce the present comparatively hairless condition of our bodies. Nevertheless there are numerous cases of reversion to the original hairy condition, such as that of the Ainos, in northern Japan, and of the hairy Siamese family,[50] described by Mr. Darwin.
Sculpture.
Fig. 87.—Handle of Dagger, Laugerie Basse, 12.
The Cave-men were also acquainted with the art of sculpture. In the cave of Laugerie Basse, the handle of a dagger (Fig. 87) of reindeer antler has been carved into the shape of that animal, with his head thrown back, so as to allow the antlers to rest on the shoulders, the forelegs being folded gracefully under the body, and the hind passing gradually into the blade. An examination of the figure shows with what grace the artist has treated the animal. The same composition is to be observed in the figure of a reindeer carved in ivory, from the rock-shelter of Montastruc,[51] not far from the cave of Bruniquel, in which place the figure of an elephant has also been discovered. In both of these the body forms the handle of the dagger. The human figure also is represented in two small ivory statuettes[52] found in the caves of Southern France; but, as might be expected, they are so roughly done, that they tell us little of the physique of the Cave-man. The ivory used in the sculptures and engravings was undoubtedly derived from the tusks of the mammoth, and the sharpness of the outlines implies that it was used while fresh. The graving tools consisted of the sharp edges and points of flint flakes.
When we take into account the rude materials which the Cave-men possessed for their sculptures and engravings, the accuracy with which they represented the figures which came more prominently before them in their daily life is most extraordinary, and at the present day it only finds a parallel among uncivilised peoples in the artistic representations of the Eskimos.
Skeletons of Cave-men.
Human bones of the Cave-men are as rare in the caverns and rock-shelters as in the river-deposits, and are for the most part represented merely by fragments. We owe to M. Dupont[53] the discovery of a lower jaw and an ulna at a depth of 4⋅50 mètres below the surface, in the cave of Naulette, in an undisturbed layer, covered by successive deposits of sand, stalagmite, and clay. The jaw is massive and prognathous. A second case of the occurrence of the bones of Cave-men is offered by a lower jaw obtained by M. de Vibraye in the Grotte des Fées,[54] at Arcy-sur-Cure (Yonne). It rested in the middle of a stratum at a mètre from the surface, along with flint implements and a sacrum of a cave-bear, deeply cut, and the remains of the spotted hyæna, mammoth, and woolly rhinoceros. It presents the same characters, but in a less marked degree, as that of Naulette.
Human skeletons, probably of the age of the Cave-men, have been discovered by M. Massenat in the refuse-heaps under the rock-shelter of Laugerie Basse.[55] One of these, termed "the crushed man," lay at a depth 4 mètres in the débris of ancient hearths, and underneath large blocks of stone which had fallen from the rock above. It was in the crouching posture, and had apparently been crushed by the rocks above. According to Dr. Hamy it belongs to the same long-headed, robust race of men, whose remains are met with in the rock-shelter of Cro-Magnon. Other human remains, previously obtained from the same place by M. Massenat, possess long skulls of the usual Neolithic type, as well as the flattened tibia and other modifications of bones of the thigh and leg, which, in Professor Busk's opinion, show that the feet were not hampered in their movements by a rigid sole or sandal.[56]
A human frontal and lower jaw from La Madelaine, together with flattened (platycnemic) tibiæ, are also recorded by Professor Edward Lartet, and are referred by Dr. Hamy to the age of the Cave-men.
A human tooth, found in the cave of Plas Newydd, already referred to, is the only piece of the human frame of late Pleistocene age foimd in Great Britain.
Human Remains in the Cave of Duruthy.
Fig. 88.—Section of Duruthy Cave.
One of the best examples of the discovery of human bones, of the Cave-men, is offered by the cave of Duruthy, explored by MM. L. Lartet and Chaplain-Duparc, in 1874,[57] which is of very high importance also in other respects. The cave is situated on a rocky promontory of nummulitic limestone, near Sorde, in the Western Pyrenees, overlooking the junction of the Gave d'Oleron and Gave de Pau, two tributaries of the Adour, and is hollowed in the nummulitic limestone. The undisturbed strata which it contained were in the following order (Fig. 88):—On the rocky floor was a layer of red earth with flint flakes and fragments of charcoal (l), in the upper part of which was a thin layer of soil, black with charcoal (2), replaced on the inner side by a yellow loam, in which no less than forty canine teeth of bear, and three canine teeth of lion, perforated for suspension, were found lying side by side, in such a manner as to prove that they had formed part of a necklace (B). On this layer rested a crushed human skull (A of figure). Then succeeded a thick accumulation of refuse (3), composed of broken bones of horses, oxen, stag, and reindeer, large quantities of ashes, and various flint implements, scrapers, flakes, and the like, of the usual Palæolithic types, as well as a few scattered human phalanges. This in its turn was covered by a thick talus (4), which had fallen from the cliff above, and completely masked the rock-shelter. In it the large blocks of stone fallen from the cliff, and which were to be observed also in No. 3, had evidently been arranged on the inner side so as to form a barrier, and on the removal of this a sepulchral vault (D) was exposed to view, containing numerous skulls and skeletons, proved to be of Neolithic age by beautifully chipped implements, one of which bore marks of grinding. There were also rude fragments of pottery, and various implements of bone of the usual Neolithic type. The bodies also had been buried in the crouching posture so universal in interments of that age, and the entrance had been blocked up with large slabs of stone obtained from the neighbouring cliff. The talus had accumulated during the long series of ages separating the Neolithic age from the time of the discovery. The strata below were undisturbed, and the Palæolithic age of the human skull at A was established by its position, as well as by its association with the implements of that period.
MM. Lartet and Chaplain-Duparc consider that the necklace belonged to the possessor of the skull (A), who may have been killed by the fall of the blocks of stone found above it; and they account for the absence of the rest of the skeleton by the suggestion that the body was devoured by wild beasts. The necklace is a remarkable trophy of the chase, for besides proving that the Cave-men were in the habit of killing lions and bears, the engravings with which most of the teeth are adorned are of singular interest. Most of them are marked with deep artificial grooves and with the barbed heads of harpoons or arrows, similar to those we have figured, and one of which was found near the skull at the point C. On one bear's tooth a pair of gloves has been engraved, on another is to be seen the figure of a pike standing out in relief; while on a third the figure of a seal has been engraved in outline with its characteristic head and flippers admirably drawn (see Figs. 75, 76, 82, 84). It is, therefore, evident that the hunter of the Western Pyrenees depended not merely upon the animals haunting the forests and the plains for food, but that he descended from time to time to the shore, and waged war against creatures living in the sea, after the manner of the modern Eskimos.
The human skull is referred by its discoverers, and Dr. Hamy,[58] to the same race of men as those found in the cave of Cro-Magnon. Its crushed condition, however, and the absence of the facial bones, render this view doubtful, although enough of it is preserved to show that it was long. The skulls from the Neolithic tomb above are also long, and are considered by their discoverers to belong to the same race as those of Cro-Magnon and the other caves of the Vezère. They therefore hold that in this cave there is proof of the survival of the Palæolithic man of the caves into Neolithic times. It seems to me that the evidence ought to be read the other way, and that it tends to show that the "race of Cro-Magnon," which I have already given my reasons for believing to be later than the Palæolithic, really belongs to the Neolithic age (see pp. 206-7).
No Interments proved to be of Palæolithic Age.
The fact that caves were largely used as sepulchres in the Neolithic age renders it necessary to use extreme caution in assigning any interments to the Palæolithic dwellers in caves without unmistakable evidence. This seems to me to be wanting in most of the examples generally accepted, which I have classified under the head of doubtful in my work on Cave-Hunting. For the reasons there given the antiquity of the Neanderthal skull is doubtful, while the interments in Cro-Magnon are seen in the section (Fig. 74) to be later than the Palæolithic accumulation below. The so-called "fossil man of Mentone" may be referred to the same date as the polished stone axe of the Neolithic age found in the cave, and now preserved in the museum at St. Germain. The pottery found in the caves of Engis and Trou de Frontal in Belgium, and in those of Aurignac, Bruniquel, and Bize, is identical with the Neolithic pottery, and may therefore be taken to indicate the date of the interments.
Those experienced in digging caves know how very difficult it is to separate the contents of deposits of two different ages lying together in the same place, and frequently mingled together by previous diggers, as well as by the burrowing animals. There seems to me no case on record up to the present time which establishes the fact that the Cave-men were in the habit of burying their dead so securely as to keep out the hyænas. The fragmentary remains of the human frame left in the refuse-heaps may reasonably be taken to imply that disregard for the bodies of the dead which is so conspicuous among the modern Eskimos.
Relation of the Cave-men to the River-drift men.
In the course of this chapter we have seen that the river-drift implements in the caves of Cresswell Crags, of Kent's Hole, and of the Grotte de l'Eglise, are found in the strata below those with the implements of the Cave-men, and consequently that the River-drift men lived in Britain and France before the Cave-men. We have also noted that the latter are in a different stage of culture from that which was enjoyed by the former, the implements being not only better, but, taken as a group, of a different kind, although some simple forms, such as the flake, scraper, and hammer-stone, are common to both. How are they related to each other? Is the culture of the latter the outcome of the development of that of the former? Or is it to be viewed as having been introduced into Europe by a totally different race? In dealing with these difficult questions several important considerations must be weighed. First, the absence of the higher types of implement in the camping-places of the River-drift men cannot be accounted for on the ground that they are smaller, or that they are partly composed of bone and antler, which are more perishable than the massive flints of the river-drift deposits. Camping-places of the Cave-men have been met with in France and in Germany, in which the implements are associated together in the same manner as in the caves. From one of these, at Schussenried in Würtemberg, Professor Fraas has described implements of bone and antler in an old refuse-heap resting upon a glacial deposit, formed by an extension of the Alpine glaciers into the valley of the Rhine, and proving that the Cave-men hunted the reindeer in Würtemberg after the retreat of the ice from that district. A second example is offered by that of Solutré, mentioned above, where implements of bone and antler, and elegantly chipped flint implements, some very small, have been met with by MM. Ferry, Arcelin, and others. Some caves and rock-shelters also were inhabited by the River-drift men, who have left behind their implements without any trace of the higher types of the Cave-men, although the refuse-heaps of both have been subjected in the main to the same set of destructive agencies. In them the two series present the same contrast in contents as that offered by the implements from the River-drift when compared with those of the caves. The two series must therefore be taken to represent two distinct states of culture, of which the newest, or that of the Cave-men, is by far the higher.
Mr. Evans[59] is inclined to hold that they belong to the same age and the same race, his argument being principally based upon the fact that the associated animals are the same in the river-deposits and the caves. It must, however, be remarked that the Pleistocene age was of vast duration, and that the latest division of it, during which the animals exhibit no variation, was long enough to allow of a series of migrations of man, or of the development of a new culture in Europe. Its length may be estimated from the fact that although the rivers of Great Britain have not materially altered their courses or lowered their valleys since the invasion of the Romans, the rivers in the late Pleistocene age present both these changes. The river Wily near Salisbury, for example, quoted above, cut its way down upwards of 80 feet, and developed a new course for itself, while the River-drift men and late Pleistocene animals were living in the district. These changes, measured at the present rate of erosion, could not have been produced in a short time,[60] and when they are recognised as part of a similar series of changes affecting the hills and valleys of the whole of Europe they imply a vast series of ages. Further, although the fauna of Europe has remained almost the same from the close of the Pleistocene age down to the present time, man and his influence being put out of the question, various races of men in different stages of culture have successively invaded Europe. It may be concluded therefore that the identity of the fauna of the caverns with that of the river-deposits can reveal nothing as to the relation of the Cave-men to the River-drift men.
A strong argument in favour of their belonging to two different races may be founded on their different range. The River-drift hunter wandered over the whole of Europe south of Norfolk, leaving traces behind in Spain, Italy, and Greece, and through Asia Minor and the whole of India. The Cave-man is restricted to the area extending from the Alps and Pyrenees as far north as Derbyshire and Belgium, and has not been as yet found farther east than Poland and Styria. Had they belonged to the same age and race this difference could hardly have occurred. This difference in range implies, as we have already observed, that the River-drift men belong to the southern group of Mammalia, while the Cave-men must be classified with the reindeer, the musk sheep, and other northern animals. After taking these facts into account, they may be referred either to two distinct races, or to two sections of the same race which found their way into Europe at widely different times; the River-drift men being of far higher antiquity in Europe, and probably having lived for countless generations before the arrival of the Cave-men and the appearance of the higher culture.
We are without a clue to the ethnology of the River-drift man, who most probably is as completely extinct at the present time as the woolly rhinoceros or the cave-bear; but the discoveries of the last twenty years have tended to confirm the identificatioQ of the Cave-man with the Eskimos.
Relation to the Eskimos.
On passing under review the manners and customs of all the savage tribes known to modern ethnology, there is only one people[61] with whom the Cave-men are intimately connected, in their manners and customs, in their art, and in their implements and weapons. The Eskimos range at the present time from Greenland on the east, along the shores of the Arctic Sea, as far to the west as the Straits of Behring,[62] inhabiting a narrow littoral strip of country, and living by hunting, fishing, and fowling. They collect round their habitations vast refuse-heaps, of precisely the same kind as those of the Cave-men in Europe. Captain Lyon gives the following account of one of these which he visited in the summer at Igloolik:—[63]
"The ground all around was strewed with skulls and skeletons of animals; and human heads were picked up to the amount of at least a dozen! Bones indeed were so numerous that we literally trod on them. A large stagnant field of mud surrounded the place, adding its full share of sweets, as it was constantly ploughed up by all who walked through it to the huts: the bottom of this also felt as if covered with bones. Near at hand were several large tumuli, which had formerly been dwellings, but which were now solid moss-covered mounds. From their appearance in decidedly different states of antiquity, from the very slow progress either of vegetation or decay in a country which for at least nine months in the year is frozen as hard as a rock, and from the natives never recollecting them as being inhabited, I am led to suppose that the island of Igloolik must have been, for centuries, the residence of Eskimaux. It is strange that the skulls of men should have been left to lie neglected under foot amongst those of all kinds of animals; but the natives treated the matter with the utmost indifference, and a lad who accompanied me a few miles inland to shoot, carried down to the boat for me a couple of human heads I had found near a lake, with the same willingness as some ducks I had killed. In the course of my rambles I saw four more of these remnants of Eskimaux, which were eagerly pointed out by the boy when he saw I was interested in them. Near one a stone cooking-vessel was lying, and had probably been buried at the same time as the body.
"In addition to the above specimens, I was so fortunate, after a long chase, as to shoot a snowy owl, an extremely rare and beautiful bird, and seldom seen even in these regions."
Time and place being changed, this account would stand, in its main outlines, for a description of one of the refuse-heaps on the banks of the Vezère, or of the tributaries of the Humber, or in the valleys of the Lesse, of the Meuse, or the Adour. The bones are broken in the same way, and belong to a large extent to the same animals. In both are the remains of the reindeer, musk sheep, Arctic fox, Arctic hare, grouse, and snowy owls, as well as traces of whales and seals. The differences are merely those resulting from the fact that the Eskimos live, to a very great extent, upon marine animals, while the Cave-men were surrounded by the rich and varied fauna inhabiting Europe in the late Pleistocene age.
The rarity of human bones in the refuse-heaps of the Cave-men is satisfactorily explained by the abun- dance of the hyænas, which would inevitably eat up any human body left insufficiently protected. The few cases in which fragments of the human skeleton have been found in the refuse-heaps of the Cave-men, coupled with the absence of any well-authenticated case of an interment, renders it very probable that they cared as little for their dead as the Eskimos, who leave them covered up with a few slabs of snow, to be eaten up by their dogs and foxes, with the greatest indifference. Captain Parry was informed by a friend of a deceased Eskimo at Igloolik, that when he left the huts "with his wife, a dog was devouring the body as he passed," and, in a second and worse case, of the body being attacked by dogs, the friends did not hesitate to laugh as they heard or told the story.[64] This total want of reverence for the dead is exhibited, so far as I know, by no other people of the present time, and it is therefore not a little remarkable to find the traces of a similar insensibility among the Cave-men.
Fig. 89.
Eskimo Scraper.
An appeal to the implements and weapons proves that the manner of life of the Cave-men was the same as that of the Eskimos. The scrapers made of stone for the preparation of skins are of exactly the same pattern in both (Fig. 89). The original of the above figure has its handle made of mammoth ivory, with which the Eskimos are very well acquainted, and which they use for making various articles, as we have seen the Cave-men employed it, who hunted the animal in Auvergne. It is very possible that this habit of the Eskimos may have been handed down from the late Pleistocene times. Their supply is obtained from the fossil tusks preserved from decay by the intense cold of the Arctic regions. The sewing-needles also are of the same pattern in both, and, as Professor Ed. Lartet has pointed out, the same tendons in the reindeer's feet were used for thread for sewing skins together among the dwellers within the Arctic circle and the inhabitants of the European caves. The stone spear and arrow heads are the same in both. The barbed fowling and
Fig. 90.
Eskimo Spear.
fishing spears also have their heads attached to the shafts in the same manner among both peoples, and are of the same form, as may be seen by a comparison of Fig. 90 with Figs. 65, 66. The only difference to be observed is that they are free from the deep grooves which characterise most of those from the late Pleistocene caverns. Some, however, of the latter are without this ornament. The same identity of forms runs through their bundles of charms or amulets, composed of perforated and variously cut teeth, bones, and antlers, the marrow spoons, and the daggers of reindeer antler.
Certain implements found in the refuse-heaps of Belgium, France, and Switzerland, and the caverns, formed of reindeer antler, and perforated by one or more holes, and very generally ornamented, are known under the somewhat fanciful name of "bâtons de commandement." If those with one hole (Fig. 91) be compared with with the peculiar instrument used by the Eskimos for straightening arrows (Fig. 92), it will be seen that they are of the same type, and probably intended for the same purpose. The hole in those from the caverns is generally round, while that in those of the Eskimos is generally square; it is, however, round in one of the specimens in the British Museum. It must
 |
 |
| Fig. 91.—Implement from Veyrier, 11. | Fig. 92.—Eskimo Arrow-straightene of Walrus-tooth, 11. |
also be remarked that all those found in the caverns are considerably the worse for wear. The gloves, also, of the Cave-men (Fig. 75) are similar to those now used by the Eskimos.[65]
Fig. 93.—Eskimo Hunting Scene.
The most astonishing bond of union between the Cave-men and the Eskimos is the art of representing animals. Just as the former engraved bisons, horses, mammoths, and other creatures familiar to them, so do the latter represent the animals upon which they depend for food. On the implements of the one you see the hunting of the urus and the horse, depicted in the same way as the killing of the reindeer or walrus on the implements of the other (Fig. 93). Reindeer and seals are represented in the same manner by both. The identity of the style is so extraordinary, that had the
Fig. 94.—Portion of Implement, Laugerie Haute, 11.
head of the arrow-straightener (Fig. 94) from Laugerie Basse been found in a museum without a history, it would be ascribed to the same people as those who engraved the arrow-straightener (Fig. 92).
The probable identity of the Cave-men with the Eskimos is considerably strengthened by a consideration of some of the animals found in the caves. The reindeer and the musk sheep, the marmots, the Arctic foxes, the grouse, and snowy owls, which afforded food to the Cave-men, are still used for food by the Eskimos; and the group of animals hunted by the former in Europe is represented by fossil remains found throughout the vast region which divides the Cave-man of the Upper Danube from the inhabitant of West Georgia.
Numerous fossil bones have long been known to occur in the frozen morasses, as well as in the river-deposits in the caverns, in Central and Southern Russia in Europe, as well as throughout Siberia. In the list of animals described by Dr. Brandt,[66] discovered in the caverns of the Altai Mountains, we may remark the cave-hyæna, brown bear, pouched marmot, beaver, alpine hare, elk, stag, roe, bison, horse, and wild boar, as well as the three extinct species, the Irish elk, the woolly rhinoceros, and the mammoth. We do not lose sight of this group of animals until we cross the Straits of Behring into the land of the Eskimos. The remains obtained by Captains Beechey and Kellett[67] in the frozen gravels composing the cliffs of Eschscholtz Bay
belong not merely to animals now living in America, such as the elk, reindeer, and the bison, but also to the mammoth and the horse. The western portion of arctic America at this time belonged to the same zoological province as northern and central Europe and Asia, and was not then isolated from those regions by a tract of sea. We may therefore conclude that the man who hunted the mammalia living in Europe at this time is likely to have hunted them also in Asia and in America. Nor is the probability of his identification with the Eskimos of the present day weakened by the great distance which separates the Palæolithic caverns of Europe from the arctic regions of North America. The musk sheep, now only found in the country of the Eskimos, has been traced by its fossil remains through Russia into Germany, and as far to the south-west as the Pyrenees. Its survival in North America is to me a parallel fact to the probable survival of the Cave-men as the modern Eskimos of the same region.
All these points of connection between the Cave-men and the Eskimos can, in my opinion, be explained only on the hypothesis that they belong to the same race. To the objection that savage tribes, living under the same conditions, might independently invent the same implements, and that, therefore, the correspondence in question does not necessarily imply a unity of race, the answer may be made, that there are no savage tribes known which use the same set of implements without being connected by blood. The ruder and more common instruments, such as flakes, and in a lesser degree scrapers, are of little value in classification, but where a whole set agrees, intended for various uses, and some of them rising above the most common wants of savage life, the argument as to race is of considerable weight. It is still further strengthened by the identity of art. The articles found in the caves of Britain, Belgium, France, or Switzerland differ scarcely more from those used in West Georgia than the latter from those of Greenland or Melville Peninsula.
From these considerations it may be gathered that the Eskimos are probably the representatives of the Cave-men, and protected within the Arctic Circle from those causes by which they have been driven from Europe and Asia. They stand at the present day wholly apart from all other living races, and are cut off from all both by the philologer and the craniologist. Unaccustomed to war themselves, they were probably driven from Europe and Asia by other tribes in the same manner as within the last century they have been driven farther north by the attacks of the Red Indian.
The Cave-men not represented among the present Populations of Europe.
What is the relation of the Cave-men to the peoples who succeeded them in Europe? Did they disappear at the close of the Pleistocene age without leaving any traces behind, or were they absorbed into other races invading Europe in the Neolithic age? The answer to these questions will depend upon the view which we take of the age of the human skeletons in the caves of Cro-Magnon, Frontal, Furfooz, and Mentone. If we follow those lately published in the Crania Ethnica, and the Matériaux by MM. Quatrefages, Hamy, and Louis Lartet,[68] we shall identify the Cave-men not only with the long-headed and round-headed races of men of Neolithic Europe, but with men now livins: in France and Belgium. The evidence, however, seems to me insufficient to establish the Palæolithic age of any one of the skeletons in the above caves,[69] while the fragmentary condition of all the human remains which are Palæolithic forbids any speculation as to the race to which they belonged.
If we appeal to the arts of the Cave-men, and those of their Neolithic successors in Europe, to be examined in the next chapter, it will be seen that there is absolutely no connection between them. The former had an extraordinary facility in reproducing animal forms on their implements and ornaments; the later had no idea of representing animals. The whole set of implements and weapons also, excepting such elementary forms as the flint flake, the pointed bone, and antler, and the needle, are altogether different. The hard-and-fast line of demarcation between the two in every country where their remains have been discovered would be impossible had the Palæolithic race or races been absorbed by Neolithic invaders. How, then, can we account for their disappearance? Simply by assuming that at the close of the Pleistocene age, when they came into contact with Neolithic invaders, there were the same feelings between them as existed in Hearne's times between the Eskimos and the Red Indian, terror and defenceless hatred being, on the one side, met by ruthless extermination on the other. In this way the Cave-men would be gradually driven from Europe, without leaving any mark on the succeeding peoples either in blood or in manners and customs.
General Conclusions.
The reader will have gathered from this and the two preceding chapters an idea of the extraordinary conditions under which man lived in Europe in the Pleistocene age. There is no trace of the knowledge of pottery or of spinning, nor at this time were domestic animals or cultivated seeds or fruits known in our quarter of the world. The Palæolithic tribes led a wandering feral life under feral conditions, and had not learned the arts of moulding plants and animals to their various needs, and thus freeing themselves to some extent from bondage to their natural conditions. The reader has seen, further, that man appears in two phases of the hunter stage of human progress—the older and lower, or that of the River-drift, and the newer and higher, or that of the Cave-men. The River-drift man was a hunter of a very low order, but not lower than the modern Australian, and from his wide range over the Old World was probably of vastly greater antiquity than his successors in Europe. There is no reason for the belief that he possessed any artistic skill. The Cave-man, on the other hand, possessed a singular talent for representing the animals he hunted, and his sketches reveal to us that he had a capacity for seeing the beauty and grace of natural form not much inferior to that which is the result of long-continued civilisation in ourselves, and very much higher than that of his successors in Europe in the Neolithic age. The hunter who was both artist and sculptor, who reproduced with his imperfect means at one time foliage (Fig. 91), and at another the quiet repose of a reindeer feeding (Fig. 86), has left behind the proof of a decided advance in culture, such as might be expected to result from the long continuance of man on the earth in the hunter stage of civilisation. From the evidence brought forward in this chapter, there is reason to believe that he is represented at the present time by the Eskimos.
- ↑ The history of the exploration of caves is treated in my work on Cave-hunting, 8vo, 1875.
- ↑ Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. Lond. xxxi. p. 679; xxxii. p. 240; xxxiii. p. 579; xxxv. June 1879.
- ↑ This singular custom is probably connected with the ancient practice of making offerings to the dead, and in later times to fairies, in little cups in stones (see Chap. IX.)
- ↑ Dawkins, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. Lond. xxvii. p. 406.
- ↑ Reconnaissance of North-Western Wyoming, 1873, p. 261.
- ↑ For the details of this discovery, see Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. Lond. xxxv., June 1879.
- ↑ The occurrence of Palæolithic man in the Victoria Cave, considered by Mr. Tiddeman to be pre- or inter-glacial, is founded on a misapprehension. The bone supposed to be human turns out to belong to a bear, and the cut bone said to have been found in an undisturbed layer in association with the extinct mammals, has probably been cut with an edge of metal, and belongs to a domestic sheep or goat, animals as yet unknown in Europe before the Neolithic age. It is also identical in its recent condition with numerous other bones of the same species cut in the same way, left behind in the cave not earlier than the fifth or sixth century after Christ. Both it and the other bones of sheep or goat were probably involved in the clay in one of the frequent slips which took place while the work was going on, and by which similar bones were let down from the refuse-heap above while I was conducting the first part of the exploration. See reports on Victoria Cave, Brit. Ass. Reports, 1870-78.
- ↑ Trans. Manchester Geol. Soc. xv. p. 51.
- ↑ Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. Lond. xxxi. p. 246; xxxiii. p. 724.
- ↑ Wild North Land, Major Butler, p. 53.
- ↑ Times, 31st October 1874. For a further account of bison see J. A. Allen, "History of American Bison," Ninth An. Rep. of U.S. Geolog. and Geograph. Survey of the Territories, 1875.—Mem. Mus. Comp. Anat. Harvard Coll. Cambridge, U.S., iv. No. 10.
- ↑ Narrative of an Expedition to the Polar Sea in 1820-23, translated by Major Sabine.
- ↑ Fauna Boreali-Americana.
- ↑ Cave-hunting, viii.
- ↑ Cave-hunting, viii.
- ↑ Brit. Ass. Reports, 1864-78.
- ↑ Journal of the Plymouth Institution, February 18, 1875, pp. 17, 18.
- ↑ Journal of the Plymouth Institution, February 18, 1875, pp. 17, 18.
- ↑ See Evans, Ancient Stone Implements, p. 468, Fig. 409.
- ↑ Brit. Ass. Rep. 1873, p. 203.
- ↑ Revue d'Anthropologie, T. iii., Nouvelle Note sur la Grotte de l'Eglise à Excideuil, par Dr. M. J. Parrot.
- ↑ Mortillet, Classification des Diverses Périodes de l'Age de la Pierre, Congr. Int. d'Anthrop. et d'Archéol. Préhist., Brussels, vol. 1872. Evans, Ancient Stone Implemenis, p. 433 et seq.
- ↑ Materiaux, 1868 passim, 1869 p. 469.
- ↑ Ancient Stone Implements, p. 439.
- ↑ Lartet, Cavernes du Périgord, Rev. Archéol. 1864. Lartet and Christy, Reliquiæ Aquitanicæ, 4to. Ducrost et Lartet, Station Préhistorique de Solutré, Archiv du Mus. de Lyon, 1872, l. i. Pl. 1. The researches of Dr. M. J. Parrot into the caves and rock-shelters of the Vezère prove that some cannot be classified with any of these divisions, which he therefore views merely as useful aids in the inquiry, but in no sense final. Bull. Soc. Anthrop. de Paris, 22d January 1873.
- ↑ Dupont divides the caves of Belgium into those of the "Age du Mammoth" and "Age du Renne." These animals, however, occur in both series.
- ↑ L'Homme pendant les Ages de la Pierre dans les Environs de Dinant-sur-Meuse, 2d edit., 1872.
- ↑ A. Perrin, Etude Préhistorique sur la Savoie, texts 8vo, plates 4to, 1871, p. 2.
- ↑ Conrad Merk, Excavations at the Kesslerloch, near Thayingen, Switzerland, transl. by J. E. Lee; Longmans, 1876.
- ↑ Oscar Fraas, Die Alten Höhlenbewohner. Sammlung Gemeinverständlicher Wissenschaftlicher Vorträge, vii, serie, Heft 168. Von Gundaker Graf Wurmbrand, Ueber die Höhlen und Qrotten in dem Kalkgebirge bei Peggau (Styria), 8vo, 1871.
- ↑ Grotta di Maccagnone, Falconer, Pal. Mem. ii. 546.
- ↑ Lartet and Christy, Reliquiæ Aquitanicæ, 4to, p. 66.
- ↑ Lartet and Ducrost, Sur la Station Préhistorique de Solutré, Archives du Museum de Lyon, t. i. p. 1.
- ↑ M. Lalande, Matériaux (1869), p. 458. This "station" has furnished the same spear-heads, scrapers, and choppers, as those of the caves of the Cresswell Crags.
- ↑ The Recent Origin of Man, 8vo, 1875, p. 195 et seq.
- ↑ Matériaux, 1871, p. 225.
- ↑ Les Temps Préhistorique en Belgique, 2d edit. p. 153.
- ↑ This is proved by the marks of cutting on the bones of the feet, pointed out by Prof. Ed. Lartet.
- ↑ See Rel. Aq., B. Pl. ix. Fig. 4, and B. Pl. xxiv. Fig. 8.
- ↑ Maétriaux, 1869, p. 348, Pl. 33, Fig. 1.
- ↑ Rel. Aq., B. Pl. 2, Fig. 8.
- ↑ Ib. B. Pl. 2, Fig. 5.
- ↑ Rel. Aq., p. 209.
- ↑ Compare the figures given by Rev. J. G. Wood of the recent whales, Natural History, pp. 531, 535.
- ↑ Rel. Aq., p. 226.
- ↑ Rel. Aq. Pl. 24, Fig. 5.
- ↑ Ib. p. 219.
- ↑ Merk, Excavations at the Kesslerloch near Thayingen, transl. by J. E. Lee, 1876. Heim, Mit. der Antiq. Gesellsch. in Zurich, xvii. p. 125. Fig. 86 is taken from Prof. Heim's careful sketch.
- ↑ Matériaux, 1874, p. 276.
- ↑ Darwin, Variation under Domestication, and Descent of Man.
- ↑ Peccadeau de l'Isle, Revue Archéol. 1868, p. 213. Matériaux, 1868, p. 96. Hamy, Paléontologie Humaine, p. 331.
- ↑ Laugerie Basse, Matériaux, 1868, p. 209.
- ↑ Op. cit.
- ↑ Bull. Soc. Geol. de France, 2d sér xviL p. 462. Hamy, Paléontologie Humaine, 1870, p. 235.
- ↑ Rel Aq., p. 256.
- ↑ Cave-hunting, c. v.
- ↑ Matériaux, 1874, p. 101 et seq. Bull. Anthrop. Soc. de Paris, ix. p. 516 et seq.
- ↑ Bull. Anthrop. Soc. de Paris, ix. (1874), p. 527 et seq.
- ↑ Ancient Stone Implements, p. 574.
- ↑ On this point see Evans, Ancient Stone Implements, c. xxxv.
- ↑ This question is discussed also in Chapter IX. of my work on Cave-hunting.
- ↑ It appears also from the letters recently sent home by Professor Nordenskiold that they inhabit the shores of North-Eastem Siberia.
- ↑ Lyon's Private Journal, p. 236.
- ↑ Second Voyage, 4to, pp. 393, 396.
- ↑ The gloves of the Eskimos in the British Museum present considerable variations. Those from Victoria Land have a thumb and four fingers, or a thumb only, those from Disco and Cambridge Bay a thumb only, while those from Point Barrow have a thumb and three fingers.
- ↑ Brandt, Mélanges Biologiques tirés du Bull. Acad. Imp. des Sc. de St. Pétersb., t. vii. 1870.
- ↑ Beechey, Voyage to the Pacific, 4to, 1831, appendix; Kellett, Zoology of H.M.S. Herald, 4to, 1854.
- ↑ Quatrefages and Hamy, Crania Ethnica, i. ii, iii.; Matériaux, 1874 p. 167, 1875 p. 58; Louis Lartet, Matériaux, 1874, p. 167.
- ↑ My reasons for this view are given in Cave-hunting, c. vii.