Books: Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples

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Other ruins are evidently remains of the royal residence. The homes
of the people were clustered on the sides and at the foot of the
hill. After the destruction of the town by the Greeks, the Acropolis
formed one vast mass of ruins, from which bits of walls stood out here
and there as mute witnesses of the catastrophe. The thin layer of black
earth covering the ruins seems to point to the speedy rebuilding of the
town. The houses of the third settlement are very irregularly grouped,
and consisted mostly of one story only, containing a number of very
small rooms. Some of the walls are of bricks with glazed facings,
others of very small stones cemented together with clay. In one
house of rather larger size than the others was found some cement
made of cinders, mixed with fragments of charcoal, broken bones,
and the remains of shells and pottery. On the northwest the new
colonists erected walls in place of those which had fallen down, but
they were of very inferior masonry, coarse bricks baked on the spot,
in the way customary among the Trojans, having formed the material.

The destruction of the third town was more complete than that of
Troy. The walls of the houses can still be made out rising to a
certain height, and it was upon them as foundations that the fourth
colony set up their abodes. These dwellings are smaller still, with
flat roofs formed of beams on which was laid a coating of rushes and
clay. Every generation appears to have been poorer than the last,
alike in material wealth and in fertility of resource.

The fifth colony spread northwards and eastwards. Their homes were
built very much in the same style as those of their predecessors. The
resemblance does not end there, and Dr. Schliemann notes that among
the ruins of the three towns, which successively rose from the site
of Troy, are found similar strange-looking idols, hatchets in jade,
porphyry, diorite, and bronze, goblets with two handles, clumsy
stone hammers, trachyte grindstones, and fusaioles or perforated
whorls bearing symbolic signs of a similar form. Evidently the men
who succeeded each other after the great siege of Troy on the now
celebrated hill of Hissarlik belonged to the same race, perhaps even
to the same tribe. There are, however, certain notable differences
which must not be passed over. The later pottery is not of such
fine clay or so well moulded as the earlier specimens, nor are the
stone hammers, which appear to have been the chief implements used,
of such good workmanship. The piles of shells left to accumulate
about the houses of the fourth and fifth towns can only be compared
to the kitchen-middings so often referred to, and there is no doubt
that those who left such heaps of rubbish about their dwellings could
not have been so civilized as were the celebrated Trojans.

Beneath the ruins of the Greek town, which strictly speaking belongs
to history, Schliemann found a quantity of pottery of curious shapes
and very different to anything he had previously discovered. He
ascribes them to a Lydian colony which dwelt for a short time upon the
hill. This pottery resembles that known as proto-Etruscan, of which
so many specimens have been found in Italy. Probably the makers of
both were contemporaries.

By numerous and careful measurements Dr. Schliemann has been able to
determine exactly the thickness of the layers, which correspond with
the different periods during which Hissarlik was inhabited. The remains
of the Greek and Lydian towns extend to a depth of 7 1/2 feet beneath
the actual level of the soil; the fourth layer, from 7 1/2 to 15 feet;
the third, from 15 to 22 1/2 feet; Troy itself, from 22 1/2 to 32 feet;
and lastly Dardania, from 32 to 52 feet. The last layer carries us
back to the golden age of Greek art, where all doubt is finally at
an end. The bas-reliefs of remarkable workmanship bear witness to
the Ilium, founded in memory of Troy. This is the town visited by
Xerxes, Alexander the Great, and Julian the Apostate.[254] That the
town still existed about the middle of the fourth century is proved
by medals taken from the ruins, but it evidently fell into decadence
soon after that time, for its very .name was forgotten by history,
and it was reserved for our own time to resuscitate the ancient city
of Priam and its successors from the ruins which lead been piled up
by the destructive hand of man and by the lapse of tinge. But this
task has been nobly achieved by the enthusiasm, scientific acumen,
and we may perhaps add good-fortune of an archaeologist who cherished
a positive passion for everything relating to Homeric times.

The number of objects picked up at different stages of the excavations
was very considerable. Dr. Schliemann neglected absolutely nothing that
appeared to him at all worthy of his collection, which now belongs to
the Royal Museum of Berlin and contains some twenty thousand objects,
including weapons and implements, some of stone, others of bronze,
and thousands of vases and fusaioles, gazing upon which we see rise
before our eyes a picture of a civilization unknown before but through
the Iliad and a few meagre historical allusions.

Before we note in detail the most remarkable of the objects in
Dr. Schliemann's collection, we must add that recent researches
have also brought to light the remains of a little temple dedicated
to Pallas Athene and referred to in history, as well as those of a
large Doric temple erected by Lysimachus, and of a magnificent theatre
capable of holding six thousand spectators, and which probably dates
from the end of the Roman Republic. The human bones picked lip among
the ruins of the different towns play be attributed to the practice,
already general, of cremation. Virchow has examined the skull of a
woman found at Troy, which is of a pronounced brachycephalic type
(82.5). The crania from the third town, on the other hand, are
dolichocephalic, the mean cranial capacity being sixty-seven. If we
could reason with any certainty from cranial capacity, this would
appear to point to a different race, but it would not do to come to
any positive conclusion with only one Trojan cranium to judge by.

FIGURE 89

Vase ending in the snout of an animal. Found on the hill of Hissarlik
at a depth of 45 1/2 feet.

But to return to Dr. Schliemann's fine collection. The pottery from
the first town, found at a depth of from thirty-two to fifty-two feet
(Fig. 89), is superior alike in color, form, and construction, to the
keramic ware of the following periods. The potter's wheel was unknown,
or at least very rarely used,[255] and pottery was hand made and
polished with bone or wood polishers, the marks of which can still
be made out. The forms are varied and often graceful, many of them,
as do those found in the mounds of North America imitating those of
the animals among which the potters lived. The usual color of the
keramic ware is black, some times decorated with white lozenge-shaped
ornaments. Some vases have also been found colored red, yellow,
and brown, and even decked with garlands of flower and fruit, as are
some of those of Santorin. We must also mention some apodal vases,
and others with three feet, used for funeral purposes, containing
human ashes (Fig. 90). The terra-cotta fusaioles, found in such
numbers among the ruins of the towns that rose successively from
the hill of Hissarlik, are, on the other hand, rare at Dardania,
if we may retain that name.[256]

FIGURE 90

Funeral vase containing human ashes. Found at a depth of 50 feet.

Excavations have brought to light more than six hundred celts or
knives, generally of smaller size than those found in Denmark or
France. Rock of many kinds, including serpentine, schist, felsite,
jadeite, diorite, and nephrite, were used; and saws of flint or
chalcedony, some toothed on one side only, others on both, are of
frequent occurrence. They were fixed into handles of wood or horn,
and kept in place with some agglutinative substance, such as pitch,
several of them still retaining traces of this primitive glue. We must
also mention awls, pins of bone and ivory, and ossicles or knuckle
bones, in every stage of manufacture, confirming the accounts of
Greek historians, who tell us of the great antiquity of the game
played with them. The Dardanians used wooden and bone implements and
weapons almost exclusively. It is impossible to say whether they were
acquainted with the use of metals, but we might assert that they were
if we could quite certainly attribute to them a certain mould of mica
schist, found at a depth of 45 1/2 feet, which bad been used in the
process of casting spits and pins, which are. supposed to be of more
ancient date than the fibulae.

FIGURE 91

Large terra-cotta vases found at Troy.

FIGURE 92

Earthenware pitcher found at a depth of 19 1/2 feet.

FIGURE 93

Vase found beneath the ruins of Troy.

The most valuable objects of the collection come from the deposits
representing the town of Troy; they are all twisted, broken, and
charred, bearing witness to the fierceness of the flames in which the
town perished. These discoveries reveal to us the daily life of the
people of Troy. Judging from the number of boars' tusks found, hunting
must have been a favorite pastime with them. The bones of oxen, sheep,
and goats, of smaller species than those of the present day, have also
been found. Horses and dogs were rare, and cats unknown. The domestic
poultry of the present day was also wanting, no remains of birds
having been found except a few bones of the wild swan and the wild
goose. Fish and mollusca, as proved by the immense numbers of bones
and shells, formed an important part of the diet of the Trojans. They
also fed largely on cereals, which they cultivated with success; and
wheat, the grains of which were very small, was known to them. The
preservation of these vegetable relics was due to carbonization.

FIGURE 94

Terra-cotta vase found with the treasure of Priam.

FIGURE 95

Vase found beneath the ruins of Troy.

The pottery discovered is of an infinite variety, and includes jars
from 4 3/4 feet to 7 3/4 feet high (Fig. 91), of Which Schliemann
found more than six hundred, nearly all of them empty. Their size
need not surprise us, for Ciampini[257] speaks of a pottery DOLIUM
of such vast size and height that a ladder of ten or twelve rungs was
needed to reach the opening.[258] With these jars were found some large
goblets, some long-necked vessels (Fig. 92), some amphorae, and vases
with three feet (Fig. 93). Some of the vases had lids the shape of a
bell (Fig. 94), others were provided with flaps or horns by which to
lift them (Fig. 95). The potter gave free vent to his imagination,
but the decorations representing fish-bones, palm branches, zigzags,
circles, and dots, are all of very inferior execution.

FIGURE 96

Earthenware pig found at a depth of 13 feet.

FIGURE 97

Vase surmounted by an owl's head. Found beneath the ruins of Troy.

Two series of terra-cotta objects deserve special mention, one
representing animals, generally pigs (Fig. 96), though an example
has been found of a hippopotamus; a fact of very great interest,
as this animal does not live at the present day anywhere but in the
heart of Africa. We know from this terra-cotta representation that
it lived in Greece in the days of Troy. Pliny speaks of it in Upper
Egypt in his day, and according to Mariette it lived thirty-five
centuries before the Christian era in the delta formed by the mouth
of the Nile. The second series of objects referred to above as of
special interest are vases representing the heads of owls with the
busts of women (Fig. 97). It is easy to make out the beak, eyes,
and ears of the bird, and the breasts and navel of the woman. In
some instances the face, breasts, and sexual organs of a woman are
represented by a series of dots forming a triangle with the point
downwards.[259] Other dots represent a necklace, and very similar
designs are to be seen on the Chaldean cylinders. Can we then connect
them in any way with the relics of Troy, and is it possible that
the Trojans and Chaldeans were of common origin? However that may
be, the constant repetition of these signs proves that they were of
hieratic character. Terra-cotta was also used for a very great number
of other purposes, as was the case everywhere before the introduction
of metals. Some deep and some flat plates made of very common clay have
been found, together with buttons, funnels, bells, children's toys,
and seals on which, some authorities think, Hittite characters can
be made out. No lamps, or anything that could serve their purpose,
have been found. The Trojans probably used torches of resinous wood
or braziers, when they required artificial light.

It would be impossible to give a list of the objects of every variety
found among the ruins of Troy, with the aid of which we can form a very
definite idea of the private life of its people. Some fragments of an
ivory lyre, and some pipes pierced with three holes at equal distances,
bear witness to their taste for music; a distaff, still full of charred
wool, deserted by the spinner when she fled before the conflagration,
tells of domestic industry and manual dexterity, while marble and stone
phalli prove that the generative forces of nature were worshipped.[260]

FIGURE 98

Copper vases found at Troy.

The weapons and implements found included haematite and diorite
projectiles used in slings, stone hatchets, and hammers pierced to
receive handles, flint saws and obsidian knives. Metallurgy began to
play an important part, and stone with its minor resisting power was
quickly superseded by bronze. In fact, Virchow was certainly justified
in saying that the whole town belonged to the Bronze age. Iron was
still unknown, at least so far no trace of it has been found, either
among the ruins of Troy or of the towns which succeeded it. Several
crucibles and moulds of mica, schist, or clay have been found with one
of granite of rectangular shape bearing on each face the hollows in
tended to receive the fused- metal. The Schliemann museum possesses
numerous battle-axes[261] of bronze, some double-bladed daggers
with crooked ends, lances similar to those discovered at Koban,[262]
and thousands of spits, some with spherically shaped heads, others
of spiral form. Some of these spits are made of copper, as are some
large nails weighing thirty ounces, so that this metal was evidently
still often used in a pure state.

FIGURE 99

Vases of gold and electrum, with two ingots, found beneath the ruins
of Troy.

FIGURE 100

Gold and silver objects from the treasure of Priam.

FIGURE 101

Gold ear-rings, head-dress, and necklace of golden beads from the
treasure of Priam.

At the foot of the palace, the ruins of which rise from the Acropolis
at a depth of 27 1/2 feet, the pick-axes of the explorers brought to
light metal shields, vases (Fig. 98), and dishes mixed together in
the greatest confusion, often soldered together by the intense heat
to which they had been subjected. They had probably been enclosed in
a wooden chest that was destroyed in the conflagration.[263] We are
astonished at the wealth revealed to us. Cups, goblets, and bottles of
gold (Figs. 99 and 100) lay side by side with golden necklaces[264]
and ear-rings of electrum.[265] The ornaments that had belonged to
women are especially curious. At one place alone several diadems
(Fig. 101) were picked up, with fifty-six ear-rings, six bracelets,
and nine thousand minor objects, such as rings, buckles, buttons, dice,
pins, beads, and ornaments of a great variety.[266] All these treasures
were piled up in a great silver vase, into which they had doubtless
been hastily thrown in the confusion of a precipitate flight. They
are all of characteristic forms, quite unlike anything in Assyrian or
Egyptian art. Were they made in Troy itself? Dr. Schliemann doubts
it; he thinks that the makers of such clumsy pottery are not likely
to have been able to produce jewelry of such delicate and remarkable
workmanship. I should not like to be so positive, for even amongst
the most advanced peoples we find very common objects mixed with
others showing artistic skill. Why should it not have been the same
at Troy? I think that in future Trojan art must take its place in the
history of the progress of humanity. The nineteenth century has brought
that art to light, and by a strange caprice of chance the treasures
of Priam adorn the museum of Berlin, and we have seen the diadem of
fair Helen exhibited in the South Kensington Museum of London.[267]

Treasures nearly as valuable as those we have been describing
were found in earthenware vases in several other parts of the
ruins. Unfortunately, many of the objects found were stolen and melted
down by the workmen, whilst others were taken to the Imperial Palace
at Constantinople, whence they are doomed to be dispersed. In 1873,
however, Dr. Schliemann was fortunate enough to hit upon a deposit
containing twenty gold ear-rings, and four golden ornaments which
had formed part of a necklace.[268] Similar ornaments were found at
Mykenae, near Bologna, in the Caucasus, in the Lake dwellings, and,
stranger still, on the banks of the Rio Suarez in Colombia.[269]

I will not add more to what I have already said about the towns which
succeeded each other on the ruins of Troy, and of which the successive
stages of rubbish on the hill of Hissarlik are the only witnesses
left. The flames spared none who settled on that doomed spot, and
new arrivals disappeared as rapidly as they came. The Ilium of the
Greeks and Romans alone enjoyed any prosperity, but it too was in its
turn swept away; and at the present day a few wandering shepherds and
their flocks are the sole dwellers upon the hill immortalized by Homer.

Before concluding this chapter I must refer once more to a, fact of
considerable interest. In that part of the deposits of Hissarlik which
represents Troy, Dr. Schliemann picked up the perforated whorls to
which the name of fusaioles has been given (Fig. 102), and of which
we spoke in our account of the Lake Dwellings of Switzerland. These
fusaioles are generally of common clay mixed with bits of mica,
quartz, or silica, though some few have been found at Mykenae and
Tiryns of steatite. The clay whorls before being baked were plunged
into a bath of a very fine clay of gray, yellow, or black color,
and then carefully polished. They nearly all bear ornaments of very
primitive execution, such as stars, the sun, flowers, or animals,
and more rarely representations of the human figure.

FIGURE 102

Terra-cotta fusaioles.

We ourselves think these fusaioles are amulets which were taken to
Troy by the Trojans, and piously preserved by their successors. One
important fact tends to confirm this hypothesis. A great number of them
bear the sign of the SWASTIKA[270] (Fig. 103), the cross with the four
arms, the sacred symbol of the great Aryan race so long supposed to be
the source of all the Indo-European races. The SWASTIKA is engraved,
not only on the fusaioles, but also on the diadems of the daughters of
Priam, on the idols the Trojans worshipped, and on numerous objects
from the Lydian and Greco-Roman towns. We meet with the double cross
among the prehistoric races of the basin of the Danube, who colonized
the shores of the Troad and the north of Italy, and it was introduced
with the products of that antique civilization on the one side to the
Greeks, the Etruscans, the Latins, the Gauls, the Germanic races,
the Scandinavians, and the Bretons; and on the other to the people
of Asia Minor, Persia, India, China, and Japan.[271]

FIGURE 103

Cover of a vase with the symbol of the SWASTIKA. Found at Troy.

This sign of the SWASTIKA meets us at every turn; we find it on many
ancient Persian books, on the temples of India, on Celtic funeral
stones, and on a Hittite cylinder. It is seen on vases of elegant
form from Athens and Melos; on others from Ceres, Chiusi, and Cumae,
as well as on the clumsy pottery recently discovered at Konigswald
on the Oder and on the borders of Hungary; on bronze objects from
the Caucasus, and the celebrated Albano urn; on a medal from Gaza
in Palestine and on an Iberian medal from Asido. We see it on the
Gallo-Roman rings of the Museum of Namur, and on the plaques of the
belt, dating from the same epoch, which form part of the magnificent
collection of M. Moreau. Schliemann tells us of it at Mykenae and
at Tiryns. Chantre found it on the necropoles of the Caucasus. It
is engraved on the walls of the catacombs of Rome, on the chair of
Saint Ambrose at Milan, on the crumbling walls of Portici, and on the
most ancient monuments of Ireland, where it is often associated with
inscriptions in the ogham character.[272]

The SWASTIKA occurs twice on a large piece of copper found at Corneto,
which now belongs to the Museum of Berlin. Cartailhac noticed it in
the CITANIA of Portugal, some of which date from Neolithic times.[273]
The English in the Ashantee war noticed it on the bronzes they took
at Coomassie on the coast of Guinea, and it has also been found on
objects discovered in the English county of Norfolk.

FIGURE 104

Stone hammer from New Jersey bearing an undeciphered inscription.

Moreover, if we cross the Atlantic we find the same symbol engraved
on the temples of Yucatan, the origin of which is unknown, on a
hatchet found at Pemberton, in New Jersey (Fig. 104), on vases from
a Peruvian sepulchre near Lima, and on vessels from the PUEBLOS of
New Mexico. Dr. Hamy, in his "American Decades," represents it on a
flattened gourd belonging to the Wolpi Indians, and the sacred tambours
of the Esquimaux of the present day bear the same symbol, which was
probably transmitted to them by their ancestors. The universality of
this one sign amongst the Hindoos, Persians, Hittites, Pelasgians,
Celts, and Germanic races, the Chinese, Japanese, and the primitive
inhabitants of America is infinitely strange, and seems to prove the
identity of races so different to each other, alike in appearance
and in customs, and is a very important factor in dealing with the
great problem of the origin of the human species.

We have dwelt much on the discoveries of Dr. Schliemann, but we must
add that, like all great discoveries, they have been very vigorously
contested.[274] Boetticher, for instance, considers the ruins
of Hissarlik to be nothing more than the remains of a necropolis
where cremation was practised according to the Assyrio-Babylonian
custom.[275] A distinguished and very honest savant, S. Reinach,
constituted himself the champion of this theory at the meeting of the
Congress in Paris in 1889. Schliemann replied very forcibly, and the
meeting appeared to be with him in the matter, as were also a number
of men of science who visited Hissarlik in 1888, and we think that in
the end history will adopt the opinion of the great Danish antiquarian.

We have now passed in review the chief of the works left behind him by
man from the earliest (lays of his existence to the dawn of historic
times. We must still show prehistoric man in the presence of death,
the universal destroyer, and learn from the evidence of the tombs of
the remote past how our ancestors met the common doom.

CHAPTER VIII

Tombs.

The true history of man will be found in his tombs, says Thucydides;
and as a matter of fact the sepulchre has ever occupied much of the
thoughts of man, the result of a religious sentiment, a conviction
that all does not end with the life which so quickly passes by.

From the very earliest times we meet with tokens of the hopes and
fears connected with a future existence; but, as I have already
stated, the human bones that can with certainty be said to date
from Palaeolithic times are very rare. We know but very few facts
justifying us in asserting that the contemporary of the mammoth and
of the cave bear had already learnt to respect the remains of what
had once been a man like himself. One of these few facts deserves,
I think, to be noticed with some detail.

In 1886, excavations in the cave of Spy[276] (Namur), or rather in a
terrace some thirty-six feet long by nineteen and a half wide giving
access to it, brought to light two human skeletons. One was that of
an individual already advanced in life, probably of the feminine sex,
the other of a man in the prime of life. These skeletons were imbedded
in a very hard breccia containing also fragments of ivory and numerous
flints of very small size. Some of them had very fine scratches on both
sides. From what I could learn on the spot, the skeletons when found
were in a recumbent position. The bones, few of which were missing,
were still in their natural position, and near to one of them were
picked up several arrow- or lance-heads, one of which, of phtanite,
some two and a half inches long, was of the purest Mousterien type. The
bones were those of short, squat individuals, and the skulls were of
the type of the Canstadt race, the most ancient of which anything is
known; the thickness of the crania was about one third of an inch. The
forehead, is low and retreating, the eyebrows are prominent, and the
lower jaws strong and well developed.

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