Books: Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples

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The environs of Paris are, however, no less rich. As early as
Palaeolithic times the valleys of the Seine and its tributaries were
evidently inhabited by a numerous population. M. Riviere mentions a
station near Clamart, where, in a limited space, he picked up more
than 900 flints, some worked, others mere chips, many of which bad
been subjected to heat. A sand-pit of Levallois-Perret yielded 4,000
stone objects, and on the plateau of Champigny, full of such terrible
memories for the people of France, were found nearly 1,200 flints,
knives, polished hatchets, lance heads and scrapers, mixed with
numerous fragments of hand-made pottery without ornamentation.

Are yet other examples needed? At. de Mortillet estimates at more than
25,000 the number of specimens found on the plateau of Saint Acheul,
the scene of the earliest discoveries that revealed the existence of
man in Quaternary times; and the station of Concise, on Lake Neuchatel,
which is one of the most ancient in Switzerland, yielded a yet more
considerable number. Many have, however, been lost or destroyed; the
ballast of the railway skirting the lake contains thousands of worked
stones and of pieces of the waste left in making them, all of which
were taken from the bed of the lake. It must not be forgotten that
it is only of late years that the importance of these relics of the
past has been recognized and that any one has dreamt of preserving
or of studying them.

The excavation of a gravel pit at Dundrum (County Down, Ireland)
yielded 1,100 flint implements, and M. Belluci himself picked up
in the province of Perouse more than 17,000 pieces, chiefly spear-,
lance-, or arrow-heads, belonging to six different types. The Broholm
Museum contains 72,409 weapons and implements, all found in Denmark.

We can quote similar facts in other countries. Prehistoric stations are
numerous in the Sahara and throughout the Wady el Mya, in Algeria,
and we have already spoken of the numerous specimens found near
Wargla. The workshops in this district are generally surrounded by
immense numbers of ostrich eggs, which seem to indicate that that
bird was already domesticated.[170]

In America, Dr. Abbott has sent to the Peabody Museum more than
20,000 stones, which were collected by him at Trenton, on the banks
of the Delaware, and quite recently I was told that in sinking a
well in Illinois the workmen came upon a deposit of more than 1,000
worked flints, all of oval form. Every one knows the importance of
the recent discoveries at Washington, and we might multiply examples
AD INFINITUM, for everywhere explorers come upon undoubted traces of
the active work and intelligence of comparatively dense populations,
all of whom had attained to about the same degree of development.

These numerous deposits often mark the, site of regular workshops,
tokens of the earliest attempt at social organization. In no other
way can we explain the piles of flints in every stage of workmanship
lying beside the lumps from which they were detached. One of the most
celebrated of these workshops is that of Grand-Pressigny, chief town
of the canton of the department of Indre-et-Loire, which is admirably
situated between two picturesque rivers, the Claise and the Creuse.

The flint implements of Grand-Pressigny, of which specimens can be
seen in all the museums of Europe, are some sixteen inches long, of
light color, pointed at one end and square at the other. One face is
rough, the other chipped into three oblong pieces, whilst the sides
are roughly hewn into saw-like teeth. If we examine these flints
closely we can easily make out the exact point, the EYE, as workmen
call it, where the stone was struck. At Charbonniere, on the banks of
the Saone, to quote other examples, in a radius of less than a mile,
were found weapons, tools, and nuclei, which may be compared with
those of Grand-Pressigny. In some places the collections of flints
still remaining look as if they had been used for road-making. In
some cases hatchets, knives, and scrapers seem to have been buried
in pits. Were these the reserve stores of the tribe, or the so-called
CACHES of the merchants?

It is difficult merely to name the different workshops or manufactories
discovered in the last few years. We must, however, endeavor to
mention the most important, for these workshops, we must repeat,
are an important proof of the existence of a society of organized
working communities. We meet with them on the shores of the bay
of Kiel, in the island of Anholt, in the midst of the Kattegat,
and on the borders of the Petchoura, and of the Soula, among
the Samoieds. Virchow discovered an arrow-head manufactory on the
shores of Lake Burtneek, and in 1884 the Moscow Society of Natural
Sciences made known the existence of important workshops near the
Vetluga River, in the province of Kostroma, so that we know that in
remote prehistoric times men lived and fought in a rigorous climate
in districts but sparsely populated in our own day.

There is nothing to surprise us in all these facts. Recently near the
Yenesei River, in the heart of Siberia, were found bronze daggers,
hatchets and bridle bits (Fig. 71), all bearing witness in the beauty
of their workmanship to a more advanced state of civilization than the
Lake Dwellings or megalithic monuments farther south. Many of them are
ornamented with figures of animals, so that at an epoch less remote,
it is true, than the one we have been considering, but still far
removed from our own, we find that there was an intelligent race,
with artistic tastes, living in a country now so intensely cold as
to be uninhabitable to all but a few miserable nomad Tartars.

At Spiennes, near Mons, a field was discovered, known as the CAMP
DES CAYAUX, strewn with flints, some uncut, others hewn, together
with knives and hatchets innumerable. There were also centres
of manufacture at Hoxne and Brandon, in England, at Bellaria in
Bologna, and at Rome on the Tiburtine Way. At Ponte-Molle, where
worked flints were discovered for the first time in Italy a few years
ago, a workshop was found, remarkable for the great number of stags'
antlers, from which the middle part had been removed, doubtless to be
used as handles for tools. M. de Rossi, who gives us these details,
thinks that this station was inhabited in the Paleolithic period. In
the settlement of Concise have been found not only stone implements,
but a great many articles made of bone, so that this place was
evidently an important manufacturing centre. Knives, stilettos, and
arrow heads were turned out here, and in the hands of skilful workmen
the tusks of the boars, which abounded at this time in Switzerland,
were converted into excellent chisels.

FIGURE 71

Bronze objects found at Krasnojarsk (Siberia).

To name the districts where tools were manufactured in prehistoric
times in France would be to give a list of all the departments. In
the commune of Saint-Julien du Saut we find a large manufactory where
every division of the Stone age is fully represented, from the time
of the simply chipped hatchet to that of the polished implement of
rare perfection. Everything bears witness to the prolonged residence
of man in a neighborhood which offered the attraction of vast
deposits of chalk with bands of flint that supplied alike weapons
and tools. Amongst others, we must name the so-called ATELIER DE LA
TREICHE, near Toul, which extends for an area of about a hundred acres,
that of Bonaruc, near Dax; surrounded by waste lands covered with a
scanty vegetation; that of Rochebertier (Charente), which probably
dates from the Madeleine period; and that of Ecorche-Boeuf, near
Perigueux. The Abbe Cochet tells us of an atelier in the Aulne valley,
and Maurice Sand of another near La Chatre, where we meet with the
most ancient traces of man in Berry. In the fields, near an alignment
not far from Autun, were picked up numbers of hatchets of bard rock,
barbed arrows, flakes of flint worked into scrapers or chisels, whilst
near them were the very polishers on which they had been pointed.

We have just spoken of polishers, and we said some time ago that it was
by prolonged rubbing that the remarkable weapons of Neolithic times
were produced. We must add now that a whole series of the polishers
used are to be seen on the right bank of the Loing, near Nemours;
one of which is a regular table (Fig. 72), on which can be made out
no less than fifty grooves and twenty-five cup-like depressions.

FIGURE 72

Prehistoric polisher, near the ford of Beaumoulin, Nemours.

One would have expected to find the ground near these polishers
covered with flakes of flint and pieces of tools of all kinds, but
nothing of the kind has been discovered; a fact which leads its to
suppose that the workmen only came down into the valley to finish
off their weapons by polishing them.

At the period we are considering all the continents were peopled,
and we must repeat, for it is the most important point of our
present study, that the civilization attained to by the inhabitants
was everywhere almost identical. Thus we find centres of manufacture
similar to those of Europe at the foot of the mountains of Tunis and of
Algeria. In one of the latter, at Hassi al Rhatmaia, the knives were
piled up in one place, the scrapers in another, and the arrow-heads
in a third. In this disposition M. Rabourdin thinks he sees a sign of
the division of labor, one of the most important features of modern
progress. M. Arcelin mentions a similar deposit on the summit of the
Jebel Kalabshee, near Esneh in Egypt, and a few years ago another was
found in Palestine, near the ancient Berytus, containing great numbers
of hatchets, saws, scrapers, and all the implements characteristic of
the Stone age; whilst amongst them lay the blocks from which they had
been cut. Asia Minor was evidently an important manufacturing centre
during the Stone age, and, as a matter of course, it must have had a
considerable population; and even in America discoveries of similar
extent have been made. At Kinosha, in Wisconsin, Lapham made out
a manufactory of flint and quartzite arrow-heads, which dates from
prehistoric times, and quite recently a yet more important centre of
industry has been discovered at St. Andrew (Winnipeg).

The manufactories of Spiennes and Brandon deserve special notice,
as they show us how our ancestors got the flint they used instead
of metal. At Spiennes,[171] the excavations were begun in the open
air, then the chalk containing the flint was reached by the sinking
of vertical shafts, many of which were as much as forty feet in
depth. These shafts were connected with each other by galleries running
in every direction, but always following the belts of flints. Cuttings
have brought to light the very implements of the ancient miners. They
were of the simplest description, such as picks made of stag-horn
and heavy stone hammers, all alike bearing marks of long service.[172]

Similar results were obtained in England. Canon Greenwell explored
near Brandon, in Suffolk, a series of 254 shafts, known in the
neighborhood as Grime's Graves. As at Spiennes, the shafts were
connected by galleries from three to five feet high, and one of
theta was twenty-seven feet long. The shafts and galleries had been
hollowed out with the help of picks exactly like those found in
Belgium; seventy-nine were picked up that had been thrown away by
the workmen.[173]

Some few years ago MM. Cartailhac and Boule discovered one of these
primitive quarries at Mur de Barrez, the chief town of the department
of Aveyron.[174]

They made out eight shafts in the face of a layer of limestone some
eighty-one feet long, and at every turn of their excavations they
came to fresh shafts. These shafts opened out towards the top like
funnels, and the), were not more than three feet three inches below the
surface, the flint having been struck at that depth (Fig. 73). These
shafts were, in many cases, continued by galleries, as seen in our
illustration (Fig. 74), or by trenches, where the light is, however,
more or less shut out by small landslips. It is still easy, in spite
of this, to make out the floor of the mine, for it is trodden hard by
the feet of the ancient miners. Traces of charcoal, too, reveal the
path they took, and we learn at the same time that they used fire to
help them in their work.

FIGURE 73

Section of a flint mine; T vegetable earth, C pure limestone, C M
Marly limestone, S flint.

M. Boule,[175] from whom we borrow these details, cannot restrain his
astonishment at the practical knowledge shown by these prehistoric
miners. He tells us that they sometimes left the flint standing
as pillars at pretty short intervals, or they propped up the
galleries with even more resistant material, cementing them with
clay or with calcareous earth taken from the detritus. In spite of
these precautions, landslips frequently occurred, and implements of
stag-horn (Fig. 75) have often been flattened by the fall of the roof
of the gallery. It is really curious to find implements of an exactly
similar kind used for exactly similar purposes at Spiennes, Brandon,
Mur de Barrez, and at Cissbury, to which, however, we shall have to
refer again. In the shafts of Aveyron, as in those of England, the
marks of blows of the picks are still to be seen, and in many cases a
flint or horn-pick point is still imbedded in the rock or limestone,
as if the miner had but just left his work.

FIGURE 74

Plan of a gallery, half destroyed in making the excavation which
revealed its existence. U gallery still visible; G' gallery destroyed
by the excavation.

In this last example of what has been done in France, we must also
add that of the shafts of Nointel (Oise) and those discovered in
Maine by M. de Baye, in both of which were found nodules of flint
in different stages of preparation, together with some stag-horn
picks. In none of these excavations was any metal implement found,
or any trace of the use of metal, so that we must conclude that the
mines date from Neolithic times.

We have seen how man gradually brought to perfection the tools and
weapons which were at first so clumsy. The growth of industry led
to the birth of commerce, or, to speak more accurately, to that
of barter. From the time of the earliest migrations intercourse was
begun, or rather was carried on, between the tribes, as they gradually
dispersed, often travelling considerable distances from each other,
and fresh proofs of these relations are continually brought to light as
we become better acquainted with prehistoric times. The flints worked
by the cave-men of Belgium, the fossil shells so numerous at Chaleux,
in the Frontal and Nuton caves, at Thayngen on the frontier between
Switzerland and Germany, in Italy, in the stations of anterior date to
the TERREMARE beds, have been found the shells of the pearl oyster of
the Indian Ocean, whilst in the caves of the south of France, such as
the Madeleine, that of Cro-Magnon, Bize in Herault, and Solutre on the
banks of the Saone have been picked up the shells of Arctic marine
mollusca. The cave-man of Gourdan was decked with shells from the
Mediterranean, and the man of Mentone in his turn wore a head-dress
made of Atlantic shells. Fossil shells were also much sought after;
we have alluded to those from Champagne found in Belgium; others from
the shell-marl of Touraine and Anjou had been taken into the caves of
Perigord, whilst sea-urchins from the cretaceous strata of the south of
France were found in a prehistoric station of Auvergne, and M. Massenat
picked up at Laugerie-Basse two specimens of a species not met with
anywhere but in the Eocene deposits of the isle of Wight. The Neolithic
station of Champigny, near Paris, has yielded some objects from the
Alps, and from Belgium, from the Vosges Mountains, and the Puy de Dome.

FIGURE 75

Picks, hammers, and mattocks made of stag-horn.

In the caves of Perigord were also found fragments of hyaline quartz,
which must have been brought from the Alps or the Pyrenees. In Brittany
and in Marne flints foreign to these granite districts are numerous;
and Dr. Prunieres tells us that similar discoveries were made under
the megalithic monuments of France, and that neither in the eroded
limestone districts of Lozere, known locally as LES CAUSSES, nor under
the dolmens of Haute-Vienne, were found any but implements made of
rock not native to the country.

Hatchets, daggers, and nuclei, or as they are characteristically
called by the country people LIVRES DE BEURRE, from Grand-Pressigny,
have been picked up in the bed of the Seine, at Limagne in Auvergne,
in Brittany, at Saint Medard near Bordeaux, on the banks of the Meuse,
and even as far north as the Shetland Islands. At Concise was found
red coral from the Mediterranean, whilst the yellow amber of the
Baltic was picked up in the Lake Dwellings of Switzerland, beneath
the dolmens of Brittany, in sepulchral caves, such as those of Oyes
(Marne) or Lombrives (Ariege), beneath the megalithic tomb of La
Roquette, at Saint Pargoue (Herault) beneath the dolmen of Grailhe
(Gard), at Malpas, and at Baume (Ardeche).[176] These are nearly all
Neolithic tombs, though some few of them may date from the beginning
of the Bronze age; but the cave-men of France owned amber even
earlier than this, for five fragments have been found in the Aurensan
Cave near Bagneres-de-Bigorre, which was inhabited in Palaeolithic
times. Jadeite and nephrite[177] are met with in the Lake Dwellings
of Switzerland and Bavaria, as in the caves of Liguria and Sardinia;
chloromelanite[178] in France, and obsidian[179] in Lorraine, in the
island of Pianosa and in the Cyclades. We have already spoken of the
calaite[180] found beneath the dolmens of Brittany, and we may add
now that it has also been found in the caves of Portugal and beneath
the megalithic monuments of the south of France.

Commerce developed rapidly during Neolithic times, and, as far as we
can make out from traces left, its course was from the southeast to
the northwest. Streams and rivers were followed by merchants as by
emigrants, and at an extremely remote date the sea no longer arrested
the journeys of men. At a recent meeting of the British Anthropological
Institute, Miss Buckland dwelt on the resemblance in the material,
shape, and ornamentation of a golden cup found in , Cornwall, to other
cups found at Mykenae and at Tarquinii, and maintained that the Cornish
cup must have been the work of the same artisans, and have been brought
by commerce from what was then the extremity of the known world.

It is not only in Europe that we can trace the relations established
between men separated by vast distances, by oceans, and by apparently
impassable deserts. The shells of the Atlantic and those of the
Pacific, the copper of Lake Superior, the mica of the Alleghanies,
and the obsidian of Mexico lie together beneath the tumuli of Ohio,
and quite recently Mr. Putnam exhibited to the Society of Antiquaries
a collection of jade celts and ornaments, some from Nicaragua,
others from Costa Rica, and a hatchet with both edges sharpened
from Michigan. No deposit of jade has so far been discovered on the
American continent, so that we can only suppose these objects to have
been brought from Asia at an unknown date. The marks they retain of
having been rubbed up, and the holes made in them to hang them. up,
show what store was set by them.

Monuments of many kinds scattered over different countries, weapons
and implements, relics as they are of a remote past, enable us to gain
a closer insight into the manners, customs, and mode of life of our
ancestors of the Stone age. We can picture their daily life, which we
know to have been one long struggle, without break or truce, for they
had to contend, not only with wild animals but with each other, to
fight for the use of their caves of refuge, for their hunting fields,
and for their watercourses; and later, the first shepherds had to
do battle for the pasturage necessary for their flocks. It is only
too certain that, from the earliest dawn of humanity, men gave way,
without any effort at self-control, to their brutal passions. The
right of the strongest was the only law, and wherever man penetrated
his course was marked by violence and by death. One of the femora of
an old man was found in the celebrated Cro-Magnon Cave, bearing a deep
depression caused by a blow of a projectile, and on the forehead of
the woman that lay beside him is a large wound made by a small flint
hatchet (Fig. 76). This gash on the frontal bone penetrated the skull,
and was probably the cause of death, but not of sudden death, for
round about the wound are marks of an attempt at healing it.[181]
According to Dr. Hamy, many of the bones found in the Sordes Cave
have very curious wounds. A gaping hole on the right parietal of a
woman must have been a terrible wound (Fig. 77). The woman of Sordes,
like that of Cro-Magnon, must have survived for some time; the marks
of the removal of splinters of bone, which can quite easily be made
out, leave no doubt on that point.[182]

FIGURE 76

Cranium of a woman, from Cro-Magnon, seen full face.

In the Baumes-Chaudes caves, situated in that part of the valley of
the Tarn which belongs to the department of Lozere, Dr. Prunieres
picked up numerous bones bearing scars, characteristic of wounds
produced by stone weapons.[183] Some fifteen of these bones, such as
the right and left hip bones, tibiae, and vertebrae, still contain
flint points flung with sufficient force to penetrate deeply the
bony tissue. Always indefatigable in his researches, Dr. Prunieres
also mentions having found in the cave known as that of L'HOMME MORT
bones bearing traces of cicatrized wounds, and he presented to the
Scientific Congress at Clermont a human vertebra found beneath the
Aumede dolmen pierced with an arrow-head, which is, so to speak,
encased in the wound by the formation of bony tissue.

FIGURE 77

Skull of a woman found at Sordes, showing a severe wound from which
she recovered.

Of the nineteen crania found in the Neolithic sepulchre of Vaureal
two show traces of old wounds. One of them, that of a woman, has
three different scars, two of which were of wounds that had healed,
whilst the third in the occiput was a gaping hole, which had evidently
caused death.

A sepulchral cave at Nogent-les-Vierges (Oise) contains the skeleton
of a man with a wound on the forehead, no less than four and a half
inches long by three broad. This man, who was dune young, the sutures
being still very apparent, survived this serious wound for some time.

The Gourdan Cave has yielded crania and jaws broken by blunt weapons,
whilst on other crania have been made out scratches and stripes
which could only have been produced after the hair and skin had been
removed. In the caves of the Petit-Morin valley, M. de Baye picked
up some human vertebra pierced with flints, the points of which were
still imbedded in the bones. In the Villevenard Cave one skull was
found containing three arrow-beads with transverse points imbedded in
the skull, the bone of which had closed upon them. Another arrow was
lodged between the dorsal vertebrae. It is probable that these arrows
had remained in the wounds; certainly that is the simplest way to
account for their position. About two miles from the caves of which
we have been speaking, M. de Baye discovered a sepulchre containing
thirty skeletons, all of adult and strongly built individuals. The
bodies were laid one above the other, and separated by large flat
stones and a thin layer of earth. This sepulchral cave contained
seventy-three flint points. As in the case of Villevenard, their
position leads us to suppose that these points had been sticking in
the flesh of the bodies when they were interred, and had fallen out
when decomposition set in. Probably the bodies were those of men who
had fallen victims in a bloody conflict that had taken place in the
valley. In a cave at the station of Oyes, was found stretched upon a
bed of stones a skeleton with a piece of flint, which had been flung
with great force, imbedded in the upper part of the humerus. Round
about the wound are the marks of many attempts at healing it.

Many of the human bones found in the Vivarais Cave bear traces
of having been violently fractured by stone weapons with tapering
points. In the Challes Cave (Savoy) lies the skeleton of a woman
whose skull was fractured by a flint weapon, but in this case death
was evidently immediate, at least if we may judge from the fact that
there are no signs of the wound having received any treatment. In the
Castellet Cave, a human vertebra contained the weapon which had pierced
it, but when the bone was touched the arrow-head broke off. It had,
however, been flung with such a sure hand that it had been driven
ten inches deep into the bony tissue. Here, too, the absence of any
exostosis proves that death quickly followed the wound.

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