cated with sufficient precision, did not allow of our ascertaining the material of which they were composed, nor of forming any opinion with respect to the purposes for which they might be intended. But M. Leymerie having been so obliging as to forward them to me at Paris, through our common friend M. Collomb, I have been enabled to determine their structure, which appears to me to be analogous with that of certain marine shells. The slightly convex face of some of the discs, though worn and half polished by artificial rubbing, still affords some traces of the projecting costæ of the shell of a species of Cardium. My first surmise to this effect has since been confirmed by the stricter examination, which M. Deshayes, at my request, has been good enough to make of one of these bodies.[1]
- ↑ M. de Vibraye has recently obtained twenty-four small perforated discs of the same material and form. These were found in a cromlech in the department of the Losère aboat five miles from Mende; this cromlech, which had probably been used as a sepulchre, contained human remains, together with some bones of animals of existing species. There were also found, at the same time and place, a long flint-knife, with some spear- and arrow-heads of the same material, These latter objects, from the finish of their manufacture, and the other accessories of the burial place, indicated an epoch far more recent than that of the Aurignac cavern. Perforated beads of the same form but in different materials, are not rare in the necklaces and other ornaments found amongst the Assyrian antiquities.
It is well known, that at St. Acheul near Amiens, in the same diluvial beds that have furnished so many flint implements, there have also been collected a considerable number of beads, mostly formed of the polyparies of Coscinopora globularis Beads of this kind, many of which are pierced artificially, are not rare in collections, and they may be seen in the Louvre, the Cluny Museum, and at the Jardin des Plantes, alongside the flint implements brought from St. Acheul. I had noticed in the Assyrian Museum in the Louvre, similar beads which had been found in the excavations at Khorsabad, on the supposed site of the ancient Nineveh. Having obtained from M. Barbet de Jouy, one of the keepers of the Louvre, permission to make a closer comparison between the Khorsabad beads and others recently brought by M. de Vibraye from St. Acheul, we thought it better, in order to give an authoritative support to the surmise we had entertained, to refer the matter to M. Milne-Edwards, Member of the Institute and Dean of the Faculty of Sciences. The result of the examination made by this competent judge was to show an identity of form and species between at least one of the perforated corals brought from the ruins of Nineveh, and those found in the diluvium at St. Acheul.
[These bead-like Foraminifera, Orbitolina ooncava, according to Mr. Prestwich, (Phil. Trans. Vol. 150, p. 290), occur abundantly in the Chalk, and they are found some whole and some perforated, so that the latter condition can no longer be regarded as artificial—Eds.]
M. de Longperrier had also pointed out to me a complete identity of form between the obsidian-knives of Mexico, and those of the same material found by M. Place in the foundations of Nineveh, where they had probably been deposited as a kind of votive offering.
At the time of the conquest of Mexico, Fernando Cortez observed that the native barbers cut the hair and beards of their customers with razors made of obsidian. Fragments of the same mineral and fashioned in a similar manner, have been collected on the field of Marathon, and may be seen in the Museum of Artillery, in the same glass cases with the flint arms of ancient Gaul. Thus we perceive the same form employed in the same manner, at extreme geographical distances apart, and at very considerable chronological intervals. "Man," says M. Troyon, (Habitations lacustrcs, &c.) "placed under analogous circumstances, acts in an analogous manner, irrespective of time or place."
