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This Etext Created by Jeroen Hellingman

Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples

by The Marquis de Nadaillac

Translated by

Nancy Bell (N. D'Anvers)

Translator's Note

The present volume has been translated, with the author's consent,
from the French of the Marquis de Nadaillac. The author and translator
have carefully brought down to date the original edition, embodying
the discoveries made during the progress of the work. The book will
be found to be an epitome of all that is known on the subject of
which it treats, and covers ground not at present occupied by any
other work in the English language.

Nancy Bell (N. D'Anvers).

Southbourne-On-Sea,

1891.

Contents.

Chapter Page
I. The Stone Age, its Duration, and its Place in Time 1
II. Food, Cannibalism, Mammals, Fish, Hunting and Fishing,
Navigation 47
III. Weapons, Tools, Pottery; Origin of the Use of Fire, Clothing,
Ornaments; Early Artistic Efforts 79
IV. Caves, Kitchen-Middings, Lake Stations, "Terremares,"
Crannoges, Burghs, "Nurhags," "Talayoti," and "Truddhi" 127
V. Megalithic Monuments 174
VI. Industry, Commerce, Social Organization; Fights, Wounds and
Trepanation 231
VII. Camps, Fortifications, Vitrified Forts; Santorin; the Towns
upon the Hill of Hissarlik 279
VIII. Tombs 343
Index 383

Illustrations.

Figure Page
Fossil man from Mentone. FRONTISPIECE
1. Stone weapons described by Mahudel in 1734. 8
2. Copper hatchets found in Hungary and now in national museum
of Budapest. 20
3. Copper beads from Connett's Mound, Ohio (natural size). 21
4. Stone statues on Easter Island. 37
5. Fort-hill, Ohio. 39
6. Group of sepulchral mounds. 40
7. Ground plan of a pueblo of the Mac-Elmo valley. 41
8. Cliff-house on the Rio Mancos. 42
9. House in a rock of the Montezuma canon. 43
10.
1. Fragments of arrows made of reindeer horn from the Martinet
cave (Lot-et-Garonne).
2. Point of spear or harpoon in stag-horn (one third natural
size).
3. and 4. Bone weapons from Denmark.
5. Harpoon of stag-horn from St. Aubin.
6. Bone fish-hooks pointed at each end, from Waugen. 61
11. Bear's teeth converted into fish-hooks. 62
12. Fish-hook made out of a boar's tusk. 62
13.
A. Large barbed arrow from one side of the Plan Lade shelter
(Tarn-et-Garonne).
B. Lower part of a barbed harpoon from the Plantade deposit.
65
14. Ancient Scandinavian boat found beneath a tumulus at
Gogstadten. 73
15. Ancient boat discovered in the bed of the Cher. 75

16. A lake pirogue found in the Lake of Neuchatel.
1. As seen outside.
2. and 3. Longitudinal and transverse sections.
Stones used as anchors, found in the Bay of Penhouet. 76
17. 1, 2, 3. Stones weighing about 160 lbs. each.
4. and 5. Lighter stones, probably used for canoes. 80
18. Scraper from the Delaware valley. 82
19. Implement from the Delaware valley. 82
20. Worked flints from the Lafaye and Plantade shelters
(Tarn-et-Garonne). 83
21. 1. Stone javelin-head with handle. 2. Stone hatchet with
handle. 89
22. 1. Fine needles. 2. Coarse needles. 3. Amulet. 4 and
6. Ornaments. 5. Cut flints. 7. Fragment of a harpoon. 8. Fragments
of reindeer antlers with signs or drawings. 9. Whistle. 10. One end
of a bow (?). 11. Arrow-head. (From the Vache, Massat, and Lourdes
caves) 91
23. Amulet made of the penien bone of a bear and found in the
Marsoulas cave. 92
24. Various stone and bone objects from California. 93
25. Dipper found in the excavations at the Chassey camp. 95
26. Pottery of a so far unclassified type found in the Argent cave
(France). 98
27. 1. Lignite pendant. 2. Bone pendant. (Thayngen cave). 107
28. Round pieces of skull, pierced with holes (M. de Baye's
collection). 110
29.
Part of a rounded piece of a human parietal.
Stiletto made of the end of a human radius. 111
Disk, made of the burr of a stag's antler.
30. Whistle from the Massenat collection. 112
31. Staff of office. 113
32. Staff of office, made of stag-horn pierced with four holes.
114
33. Staff of office found at Lafaye.
34. Staff of office in reindeer antler, with a horse engraved on it
(Thayngen). 115

35. Staff of office found at Montgaudier. 117
36. Carved dagger-hilt (Laugerie-Basse). 118
37. The great cave-bear, drawn on a pebble found in the Massat cave
(Garrigou collection). 118
38. Mammoth or elephant from the Una cave. 119
39. Seal engraved on a bear's tooth, found at Sordes.
40. Fragment of a bone, with regular designs. Fragment of a rib
on which is engraved a musk-ox, found in the Marsoulas cave. 120
41. Head of a horse from the Thayngen cave. 121
42. Bear engraved on a bone, from the Thayngen cave. 121
43. Reindeer grazing, from the Thayngen cave. 122
44. Head of OVIBOS MOSCHATUS, engraved on wood, found in the
Thayngen cave. 123
45. Young man chasing the aurochs, from Laugerie. 124
46. Fragment of a staff of office, from the Madelaine cave. 125
47. Human face carved on a reindeer antler, found in the
Rochebertier cave. 125
48. The glyptodon. 128
49. MYLODON ROBUSTUS. 129
50. Objects discovered in the peat-bogs of Laybach, A. Earthenware
vase. B. Fragment of ornamented pottery. C. Bone needle. D. Earthenware
weight for fishing-net. E. Fragment of jaw bone. 152
51. Small terra-cotta figures found in the Laybach pile dwellings.
153
52. Small terra-cotta figures from the Laybach pile dwellings.
154
53. Nurhag at Santa Barbara (Sardinia). 168
54. "Talayoti" at Trepuco (Minorca). 170
55. Dolmen of Castle Wellan (Ireland). 175
56. The large dolmen of Careoro, near Plouharnel. 176
57. Dolmen of Arrayolos (Portugal). 177
58. Megalithic sepulchre at Acora (Peru). 178
59. The great broken menhir of Locmariaker with Caesar's table.
186

60. Covered avenue of Dissignac (Loire-Inferieure), view of the
chamber at the end of the north gallery. 189
61. Covered avenue near Antequera. 190
62. Ground plan of the Gavr'innis monument. 191
63. Monoliths at Stennis, in the Orkney Islands. 193
64. Cromlech near Bone (Algeria). 196
65. Dolmen at Pallicondah, near Madras (India). 201
66. Dolmen at Maintenon, with a table about 19 1/2 feet long.
204
67. Part of the Mane-Lud dolmen. 208
68. Sculptures on the menhirs of the covered avenue of Gavr'innis.
210
69. Dolmen with opening (India). 211
70. Dolmen near Trie (Oise). 212
71. Bronze objects found at Krasnojarsk (Siberia). 237
72. Prehistoric polisher near the ford of Beaumoulin, Nemours.
239
73. Section of a flint mine. 242
74. Plan of a gallery of flint mine. 243
75. Picks, hammers, and mattocks made of stag-horn. 245
76. Cranium of a woman from Cro-Magnon (full face). 249
77. Skull of a woman found at Sordes, showing a severe wound,
from which she recovered. 250
78. Fragment of human tibia with exostosis enclosing the end of
a flint arrow. 252
79. Fragment of human humerus pierced at the elbow joint (Trou
d'Argent). 253
80. Mesaticephalic skull, with wound which has been trepanned
259
81. Trepanned Peruvian skull. 268
82. Skull from the Bougon dolmen (Deux-Sevres), seen in profile
273
83. Trepanned prehistoric skull. 274
84. Prehistoric spoon and button found in a lake station at Sutz.
287
85. General view of the station of Fuente-Alamo. 293
86. Group at Liberty (Ohio). 299
87. Trenches at Juigalpa (Nicaragua). 300
88. Vases found at Santorin. 313

89. Vase ending in the snout of an animal, found on the hill
of Hissarlik. 325
90. Funeral vase containing human ashes. 326
91. Large terra-cotta vases found at Troy. 327
92. Earthenware pitcher found at a depth of 19 1/2 feet. 328
93. Vase found beneath the ruins of Troy.
94. Terra-cotta vase found with the treasure of Priam.
95. Vase found beneath the ruins of Troy. 329
96. Earthenware pig found at a depth of 13 feet. 330
97. Vase surmounted by an owl's head, found beneath the ruins
of Troy. 331
98. Copper vases found at Troy. 333
99. Vases of gold and electrum, with two ingots (Troy). 334
100. Gold and silver objects from the treasure of Priam. 335
101. Gold ear-rings, head-dress, and necklace of golden beads from
the treasure of Priam. 336
102. Terra-cotta fusaioles. 339
103. Cover of a vase with the symbol of the swastika. 340
104. Stone hammer from New Jersey bearing an undeciphered inscription.
341
105. Chulpa near Palca. 357
106. Dolmen at Auvernier near the lake of Neuchatel. 359
107. A stone chest used as a sepulchre. 361
108. Example of burial in a jar. 363
109. Aymara mummy. 365
110. Peruvian mummies. 367
111. Erratic block from Scania, covered with carvings. 379
112. Engraved rock from Massibert (Lozere). 380

CHAPTER I

The Stone Age: its Duration and its Place in Time.

The nineteenth century, now nearing its close, has made an indelible
impression upon the history of the world, and never were greater things
accomplished with more marvellous rapidity. Every branch of science,
without exception, has shared in this progress, and to it the daily
accumulating information respecting different parts of the globe
bas greatly contributed. Regions, previously completely closed, have
been, so to speak, simultaneously opened by the energy of explorers,
who, like Livingstone, Stanley, and Nordenskiold, have won immortal
renown. In Africa, the Soudan, and the equatorial regions, where the
sources of the Nile lie hidden; in Asia, the interior of Arabia, and
the Hindoo Koosh or Pamir mountains, have been visited and explored. In
America whole districts but yesterday inaccessible are now intersected
by railways, whilst in the other hemisphere Australia and the islands
of Polynesia have been colonized; new societies have rapidly sprung
into being, and even the unmelting ice of the polar regions no longer
checks the advance of the intrepid explorer. And all this is but a
small portion of the work on which the present generation may justly
pride itself.

Distant wars too have contributed in no small measure to the progress
of science. To the victorious march of the French army we owe the
discovery of new facts relative to the ancient history of Algeria;
it was the advance of the English and Russian forces that revealed
the secret of the mysterious lands in the heart of Asia, whence many
scholars believe the European races to have first issued, and of this
ever open book the French expedition to Tonquin may be considered at
present one of the last pages.

Geographical knowledge does much to promote the progress of the
kindred sciences. The work of Champollion, so brilliantly supplemented
by the Vicomte de Rouge and Mariette Bey, has led to the accurate
classification of the monuments of Egypt. The deciphering of the
cuneiform inscriptions has given us the dates of the palaces of Nineveh
and Babylon; the interpretation by savants of other inscriptions has
made known to us those Hittites whose formidable power at one time
extended as far as the Mediterranean, but whose name had until quite
recently fallen into complete oblivion. The rock-hewn temples and
the yet more strange dagobas of India now belong to science. Like
the sacred monuments of Burmah and Cambodia they have been brought
down to comparatively recent dates; and though the palaces of Yucatan
and Peru still maintain their reserve, we are able to fix their dates
approximately, and to show that long before their construction North
America was inhabited by races, one of which, known as the Mound
Builders, left behind them gigantic earthworks of many kinds, whilst
another, known as the Cliff Dwellers, built for themselves houses on
the face of all but inaccessible rocks.

Comparative philology has enabled us to trace back the genealogies
of races, to determine their origin, and to follow their
migrations. Burnouf has brought to light the ancient Zend language,
Sir Henry Rawlinson and Oppert have by their magnificent works opened
up new methods of research, Max Muller and Pictet in their turn by
availing themselves of the most diverse materials have done much to
make known to us the Aryan race, the great educator, if I may so speak,
of modern nations.

To one great fact do all the most ancient epochs of history bear
witness: one and all, they prove the existence in a yet more remote
past of an already advanced civilization such as could only have been
gradually attained to after long and arduous groping. Who were the
inaugurators of this civilization? Who ware the earliest inhabitants of
the earth? To what biological conditions were they subject? What were
the physical and climatic conditions of the globe when they lived? By
what flora and fauna were they surrounded? But science pushes her
inquiry yet further. She desires to know the origin of tire human
race, when, how, and why men first appeared upon the earth; for from
whatever point of view he is considered, man must of necessity have
had a beginning.

We are in fact face to face with most formidable problems, involving
alike our past and future; problems it is hopeless to attempt to solve
by human means or by the help of human intelligence alone, yet with
which science can and ought to grapple, for they elevate the soul and
strengthen the reasoning faculties. Whatever may be their final result,
such studies are of enthralling interest. "Man," said a learned member
of the French Institute, "will ever be for man the grandest of all
mysteries, the most absorbing of all objects of contemplation."[1]

Let us work our way back through past centuries and study our remote
ancestors on their first arrival upon earth; let us watch their early
struggles for existence! We will deal with facts alone; we will accept
no theories, and we must, alas, often fail to come to any conclusion,
for the present state of prehistoric knowledge rarely admits of
certainty. We must ever be ready to modify theories by the study
of facts, and never forget that, in a science so little advanced,
theories must of necessity be provisional and variable.

Truly strange is the starting-point of prehistoric science. It is with
the aid. of a few scarcely even rough-hewn flints, a few bones that
it is difficult to classify, and a few rude stone monuments that we
have to build up, it must be for our readers to say with what success,
a past long prior to any written history, which has left no trace in
the memory of man, and during which our globe would appeal to have
been subject to conditions wholly unlike those of the present day.

The stones which will first claim our attention, some of them
very skilfully cut and carefully polished, have been known for
centuries. According to Suetonius, the Emperor Augustus possessed
in his palace on the Palatine Hill a considerable collection of
hatchets of different kinds of rock, nearly all of them found in the
island of Capri, and which were to their royal owner the weapons of
the heroes of mythology. Pliny tells of a thunder-bolt having fallen
into a lake, in which eighty-nine of these wonderful stones were soon
afterwards found.[2] Prudentius represents ancient German warriors
as wearing gleaming CERAUNIA on their helmets; in other countries
similar stones ornamented the statues of the gods, and formed rays
about their heads.[3]

A subject so calculated to fire the imagination has of course not
been neglected by the poets. Claudian's verses are well known:

Pyrenaeisque sub antris
Ignea flumineae legere ceraunia nymphae.

Marbodius, Bishop of Rennes, in the eleventh century, sang of the
thunder-stones in some Latin verses which have come down to us,
and an old poet of the sixteenth century in his turn exclaimed,
on seeing the strange bones around him

Le roc de Tarascon hebergea quelquefois
Les geants qui couroyent les montagnes de Foix,
Dont tant d'os successifs rendent le temoignage.

With these stones, in fact, were found numerous bones of great size,
which had belonged to unknown creatures. Latin authors speak of similar
bones found in Asia Minor, which they took to be those of giants of an
extinct race. This belief was long maintained; in 1547 and again in
1667 fossil remains were found in the cave of San Ciro near Palermo;
and Italian savants decided that they had belonged to men eighteen feet
high. Guicciadunus speaks of the bones of huge elephants carefully
preserved in the Hotel de Ville at Antwerp as the bones of a giant
named Donon, who lived 1300 years before the Christian era.

In days nearer our own the roost cultivated people accepted the remains
of a gigantic batrachian[4] as those of a man who had witnessed the
flood, and it was the same with a tortoise found in Italy scarcely
thirty years ago. Dr. Carl, in a work published at Frankfort[5] in
1709, took up another theory, and, such was the general ignorance
at the time, he used long arguments to prove that the fossil bones
were the result neither of a freak of nature, nor of the action of
a plastic force, and it was not until near the end of his life that
the illustrious Camper could bring himself to admit the extinction
of certain species, so totally against Divine revelation did such a
phenomenon appear to him to be.

Prejudices were not, however, always so obstinate. For more than three
centuries stones worked by the hand of man have been preserved in the
Museum of the Vatican, and as long ago as the time of Clement VIII. his
doctor, Mercati, declared these stones to have been the weapons of
antediluvians who had been still ignorant of the use of metals.

During the early portion of the eighteenth century a pointed black
flint, evidently the head of a spear, was found in London with the
tooth of an elephant. It was described in the newspapers of the day,
and placed in the British Museum.

In 1723 Antoine de Jussieu said, at a meeting of the ACADEMIE DES
SCIENCES, that these worked stones had been made where they were found,
or brought from distant countries. He supported his arguments by an
excellent example of the way in which savage races still polish stones,
by rubbing them continuously together.

A few years later the members of the ACADEMIE DES INSCRIPTIONS in
their turn, took up the question, and Mahudel, one of its members,
in presenting several stones, showed that they bad evidently been
cut by the hand of man. "An examination of them," he said, "affords
a proof of the efforts of our earliest ancestors to provide for their
wants, and to obtain the necessaries of life." He added that after the
re-peopling of the earth after the deluge, men were ignorant of the use
of metals. Mahudel's essay is illustrated by drawings, some of which
we reproduce (Fig. 1), showing wedges, hammers, hatchets, and flint
arrow-beads taken, he tells us, from various private collections.[6]

Bishop Lyttelton, writing in 1736, speaks of such weapons as having
been made at a remote date by savages ignorant of the use of metals,[7]
and Sir W. Dugdale, an eminent antiquary of the seventeenth century,
attributed to the ancient Britons some flint hatchets found in
Warwickshire, and thinks they were made when these weapons alone
were used.[8]

FIGURE 1

Stone weapons described by Mahudel in 1734.

A communication made by Frere to the Royal Society of London deserves
mention here with a few supplementary remarks.[9]

This distinguished man of science found at Hoxne, in Suffolk, about
twelve feet below the surface of the soil, worked flints, which had
evidently been the natural weapons of a people who had no knowledge
of metals. With these flints were found some strange bones with the
gigantic jaw of an animal then unknown. Frere adds that the number
of chips of flint was so great that the workmen, ignorant of their
scientific value, used them in road-making. Every thing pointed to
the conclusion that Hoxne was the place where this primitive people
manufactured the weapons and implements they used, so that as early as
the end of last century a member of the Royal Society formulated the
propositions,[10] now fully accepted, that at a very remote epoch men
used nothing but stone weapons and implements, and that side by side
with these men lived huge animals unknown in historic times. These
facts, strange as they appear to us, attracted no attention at the
time. It would seem that special acumen is needed for every fresh
discovery, and that until the time for that discovery comes, evidence
remains unheeded and science is altogether blind to its significance.

But to resume our narrative. It is interesting to note the various
phases through which the matter passed before the problem was
solved. In 1819, M. Jouannet announced that he had found stone weapons
near Perigord. In 1823, the Rev. Dr. Buckland published the "Reliquiae
Diluvianae," the value of which, though it is a work of undoubted
merit, was greatly lessened by the preconceived ideas of its author. A
few years later, Tournal announced his discoveries in the cave of Bize,
near Narbonne, in which, mixed with human bones, he found the remains
of various animals, some extinct, some still native to the district,
together with worked flints and fragments of pottery. After this,
Tournal maintained that man had been the contemporary of the animals
the bones of which were mixed with the products of human industry.[11]
The results of the celebrated researches of Dr. Schmerling in the
caves near Liege were published in 1833. He states his conclusions
frankly: "The shape of the flints," he says, "is so regular, that
it is impossible to confound them with those found in the Chalk or
in Tertiary strata. Reflection compels us to admit that these flints
were worked by the hand of man, and that they may have been used as
arrows or as knives."[12] Schmerling does not refer, though Lyell does,
and that in terms of high admiration, to the courage required for the
arduous work involved in the exploration of the caves referred to,
or to the yet more serious obstacles the professor had to overcome
in publishing conclusions opposed to the official science of the day.

In 1835, M. Joly, by his excavations in the Nabrigas cave, established
the contemporaneity of man with the cave bear, and a little later
M. Pomel announced his belief that plan had witnessed the last
eruptions of the volcanoes of Auvergne.

In spite of these discoveries, and the eager discussions to which
they led, the question of the antiquity of man and of his presence
amongst the great Quaternary animals made but little progress, and
it was reserved to a Frenchman, M. Boucher de Perthes, to compel the
scientific world to accept the truth.

It was in 1826 that Boucher de Perthes first published his opinion;
but it was not until 1816 and 1847 that he announced his discovery
at Menchecourt, near Abbeville, and at Moulin-Quignon and Saint
Acheul, in the alluvial deposits of the Somme, of flints shaped
into the form of hatchets associated with the remains of extinct
animals such as the mammoth, the cave lion, the RHINOCEROS INCISIVUS,
the hippopotamus, and other animals whose presence in France is not
alluded to either in history or tradition. The uniformity of shape,
the marks of repeated chipping, and the sharp edges so noticeable in
the greater number of these hatchets, cannot be sufficiently accounted
for either by the action of water, or the rubbing against each other
of the stones, still less ply the mechanical work of glaciers. We
must therefore recognize in them the results of some deliberate
action and of an intelligent will, such as is possessed by man, and
by man alone. Professor Ramsay[13] tells us that, after twenty years'
experience in examining stones in their natural condition and others
fashioned by the hand of man, he has no hesitation in pronouncing
the flints and hatchets of Amiens and Abbeville as decidedly works of
art as the knives of Sheffield. The deposits in which they were found
showed no sins of having been disturbed; so that we may confidently
conclude that the men who worked these flints lived where the banks
of the Somme now are, when these deposits were in course of being
laid down, and that he was the contemporary of the animals whose
bones lay side by side with the products of his industry.

This conclusion, which now appears so simple, was not accepted without
difficulty. Boucher de Perthes defended his discoveries in books,
in pamphlets, and in letters addressed to learned societies. He
had the courage of his convictions, and the perseverance which
insures success. For twenty years he contended patiently against
the indifference of some, and the contempt of others. Everywhere the
proofs he brought forward were rejected, without his being allowed
the honor of a discussion or even of a hearing. The earliest converts
to De Perthes' conclusions met with similar attacks and with similar
indifference. There is nothing to surprise us in this; it is human
nature not to take readily to anything new, or to entertain ideas
opposed to old established traditions. The most distinguished men
find it difficult to break with the prejudices of their education
and the yet more firmly established prejudices of the systems they
have themselves built up. The words of the great French fabulist will
never cease to be true:

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