Books: Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples

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FIGURE 108

Example of burial in a jar.

It is probable that early man also turned to account the trees he
saw growing around him, using them as coffins for his dead. But the
rapid decay of this fragile case led to its total disappearance. A
few exceptions must, however, be mentioned. In 1840 some dredgers took
from the bed of the Saone, at Apremont, from beneath a bed of gravel
five feet thick, the trunk of a tree which still contained the bones
that had been placed in it. Similar discoveries were made in the Cher,
and in the celebrated cemetery of Hallstadt, near Salzburg. The cairns
of Scania covered over split trunks of oak and birch trees, which had
been hollowed out to receive the dead. At Gristhorpe, near Scarborough,
in England, a coffin was found made of scarcely squared planks roughly
put together; and another very like it was discovered at Hove, in
Sussex, the latter containing a splendid amber cup, evidence of the
wealth of the man who had been buried in this primitive coffin.[302]

The ancient Caledonians sewed up their dead in the skins of oxen before
burying them. The Egyptians also embalmed the ibis, the ox, the cat,
the crocodile, and other animals deified by them, and the bodies of
these creatures were then placed in vast subterranean chambers, where
they have been discovered in the present day in great numbers. The
Guanches of Teneriffe, the last representatives of the Iberians, and
probably the most ancient race of Europe, took out the intestines of
the corpse, dried the body in the air, painted it with a thick varnish,
and finally wrapped it in the skin of a goat. This last custom was
evidently a relic of the original idea of embalming, with a view to
rendering the mummy as nearly as possible indestructible and, to use a
happy expression of Michelet, to compel death to endure (FORCER LA MORT
DE DURER). Our own contemporaries are thus able to look upon the very
features of those who preceded them on the earth some forty centuries
ago; and but yesterday photography reproduced in every detail what
was once Ramses the Great, one of the most glorious kings of history.

FIGURE 109

Aymara mummy.

Embalming was also practised in America. Recent travellers report[303]
having seen in Upper Peru tombs of the shape of beehives, made of
stones cemented with clay, each tomb containing one mummy or more
in a crouching position (Figs. 109 and 110). This custom was still
practised for many centuries; Garcilasso de la Vega tells us that
the dead Incas were seated in a temple at Cuzco, wearing their royal
ornaments as if they were still alive; their hands were crossed upon
their breasts, and their heads were bending slightly forward.[304]

The facts enumerated above prove that burial was long practised, though
it is impossible to say when it first cattle into use. About the time
of the beginning of the Bronze age, or perhaps even earlier, however, a
remarkable change took place in the ideas of man, and the dead instead
of being buried intact were consumed by fire on the funeral pile.

What can have been the origin of this custom? What race first
practised it? It has long been supposed by many archaeologists that
it was the Aryans from the lofty Hindoo Koosh Mountains who first
introduced into Europe a civilization more advanced than that which
had hitherto obtained there, and taught the people to cremate instead
of bury their dead. This theory was accepted for a considerable time
without question, but of late years a new school, headed by Penka,
has arisen who claim that the reformers came not from the East but
from the North. The Marquis de Saporta had indeed before suggested
that the primitive races who were the contemporaries of the mammoth
and the rhinoceros came originally from the polar regions, where the
remains of a luxuriant vegetation prove that climatic conditions
prevailed in remote times of a very different character to those
of the present day. The lignites of Iceland are made up of tulip,
plantain, and nut-trees, even the vine sometimes occurring. In the
ferruginous sandstones, associated with the carboniferous deposits of
Spitzberg, the beech, the poplar, the magnolia, the plum tree, the
sequoia, and numerous coniferous trees can be made out. The sturdy
sailors who dare the regions of perpetual ice come across masses of
fossilized wood in Banks, Grinnell, and Francis Joseph's Lands, at
88[degree] N. Lat. Among this fossil wood Heer made out the cypress,
the silver pine, the poplar, the birch, and some dicotyledons with
caducous leaves. These were not relics of wood which had drifted where
it was found on floating ice, but of an actual local vegetation,
as proved by trunks still erect in their original positions, buds,
leaves, and flowers in every stage of growth, fruits in every stage of
ripening. The very insects that had lived on honey from the flowers or
on the leaves themselves could be identified. In those remote days,
life, abundant life, similar to that now only found in the temperate
countries farther south, flourished in those polar regions, so long
supposed to have never been anything but lifeless deserts.

FIGURE 110

Peruvian mummies.

All this, plausible as it is, does not, however, appear to be
conclusive on the point under discussion; and though ,we may have to
abandon the idea of the Aryans having introduced cremation, we are
scarcely, I think, in a position to say that races from the North were
the first to practise it. I have dwelt more fully on the question of
the origin of races and the evidence which language seems to give
of a common source in two papers called "Les Premiers Populations
de l'Europe," which appeared in the CORRESPONDENT for October 1 and
November 25, 1889. Whatever may be the final decision on the much
contested points involved in this controversy, one thing is certain
that cremation, involving though it does a complete revolution in
manners and customs, spread with very great rapidity. We meet with
it from Greece to Scotland and Scandinavia, from Etruria to Poland
and the south of Russia, in China as in Yucatan and certain parts of
Central America.

In the early days of history, cremation was practised all over
Europe. The Greeks attribute its inauguration to Hercules, and the
funeral pile of Patrokles is described in the Iliad. The Pelasgians
and the Proto-Etruscans burned their dead,[305] and we are told of
the incineration of contemporaries of Jair, the third judge of Israel.

On the other hand, the earliest inhabitants of Latium buried their
dead. Visitors, who probably came by way of the valley of the Danube,
introduced the new custom, and for a long tune the two rites were
practised side by side. At Felsina and at Marzabotto we find instances
alike of inhumation and cremation, and at Vilanova only half the
tombs are those of corpses that had been cremated. In 365 of the
tombs excavated in the Certosa, near Bologna, only 115 show signs of
cremation having been practised. At Rome, the two rites were long
both performed, probably, however, by the two distinct peoples who
formed the primitive population of the town of Romulus. We know that
Numa Pompilius forbade the burning of his corpse; Cicero relates that
Marius was buried, and that Sulla, his fortunate rival, was the first
of the Cornelia GENS whose body was committed to the flames. We do
not know how early cremation was introduced in Gaul; we can only say
that Caesar found it generally practised when be made his triumphal
march across the country.[306] The celebrated excavations of Moreau
prove that inhumation and incineration were both practised among
the Gallo-Romans established in the eastern provinces of France. We
may even assert that the two rites were practised long before the
introduction of the use of metals. One thing is certain, the custom
of cremation was but slowly abandoned as Christianity spread, for
Charlemagne, in an edict dated 789, ordered the punishment of death
for those who dared to burn dead bodies.

What we have just said about historic times applies equally to more
remote epochs. Thanks to the learned researches of Dr. Prunieres[307]
we are able to trace for a great length of time the modes of sepulture
adopted in Lozere. The cave men of the eroded limestone districts of
Les Causses took their dead to the caves in which their ancestors
had been laid, and the invaders, who were probably more civilized
than those they dispossessed, placed theirs beneath the dolmens which
they erected in their honor. In the sepulchral caves of Rouquet and
of L'HOMME MORT we find inhumation; beneath the megalithic monuments
dating from the end of the Neolithic period, we meet with the first
traces of cremation, but so far of a very incomplete cremation;
the action of the funeral fire had not been intense, and the bones
were hard and resisted the heat. Noting beneath certain dolmens a
few bones blackened by fire mixed with large quantities unaffected
by it, one is inclined to think with the learned Doctor, that after
practising cremation men had reverted to the old mode of burial. In
the tumuli of the Bronze age, on the other hand, where the date can
be determined with the aid of the ornaments and trinkets scatered
about, the ustion was more complete; the bones are friable and porous,
crumbling into dust when touched, and there is nothing to indicate
that inhumation and cremation were both practised.

It is strange indeed to find that incineration was practised from
Neolithic times in the wild mountains of Lozere. There can be no
doubt on the point, however, and excavations beneath the dolmen
of Marconnieres strikingly confirm the earlier discoveries of
Dr. Prunieres. Beneath a layer of broken stones and a very thin
pavement, was found a mass of human bones in the greatest confusion;
some still retaining their natural color, others blackened and charred
by. fire. Among these bones was picked up an arrow of rock foreign to
the country, three admirably polished lance-heads, and some finely
cut flint-darts. The dolmen contained no metal objects, and there
was no trace of metal on any of the bones.

At the same period the two rites appear to have been practised
simultaneously in Armorica, but there incineration was the dominant
custom. In one hundred and forty-five megalithic monuments supposed to
date from the Neolithic period, seventy-two give proof of incineration
and twenty of inhumation only. The others yielded a few cinders, but
it was impossible to come to any definite conclusion. In many cases,
as we have seen, the megalithic monument was surrounded by a double
or triple ENCEINTE of stones without mortar. Inside these ENCEINTES
were some small circular structures made of stones reddened by the
action of heat. In the lower part of these structures were openings to
admit a current of air to fan the flames. These strange structures,
full of cinders and black greasy earth, bear the significant name of
RUCHES DE CREMATION.[308] Of thirty-nine sepulchres of the Bronze
age twenty-seven gave evidence of incineration, two of inhumation,
whilst ten decided nothing one way or the other.[309] The dolmen of
Mont St.-Michel and that of Tumiac are separated by a short distance
only; they were erected by the same race and probably about the same
period, yet at Mont St.-Michel we find incineration, while inhumation
was practised at Tumiac. How explain this difference in funeral
customs? Does it imply a diversity of race, of caste, of religion,
or of social position, or may it not rather be explained as being
merely the result of those later displacements which upset the most
careful reasoning?

Whatever may have been the cause of the different modes of burial,
we meet with them in every country.

In Scandinavia, during the Bronze age, cremation and burial were
practised in about equal proportions. Similar facts are noticed in
Germany, but in the North incineration predominates, while in the
West it is inhumation. Beneath the cairns of Caithness in Scotland,
we find some bodies lying at full length, while others are in a bent
position, and large jars of coarse pottery filled with cinders and
calcined bones which had belonged to men of medium height. One of the
largest of these jars is fifteen or sixteen inches high by forty-nine
wide at its largest part.[310] In excavating the barrows of the Orkney
Islands, Petrie noted the practice of both modes of burial[311];
but were those buried in manners so different contemporaries? This
is what we are not told, and what we have to find out.

At Blendowo in Poland, beneath a cromlech was found an urn filled
with calcined bones, and thirty centimetres lower down a skeleton
was discovered buried in the sand. Near this body was found a coin
of Theodosius, and we wonder in vain whether both the individuals,
whose remains are thus within a common tomb, lived at the same
time. Throughout Prussia and in tire Grand Duchy of Posen skeletons
and jars containing human ashes. are met with in the same tombs.[312]
We must not forget to note, especially, the necropolis of Hallstadt,
which was situated in the heart of the district of Bohemia occupied by
the Boii. The most ancient of the tombs in these vast burial-places
date from about two thousand years before the Christian era, and the
Hallstadtian period, as it is sometimes called, culminated during
the first half of the millennium immediately before the coming of
Christ.[313] Nine hundred and ninety-three tombs have been excavated;
all, to judge by the objects found with the human remains, belonging
to the Bronze age; of these five hundred and twenty-seven contained
buried bodies, and four hundred and fifty-three cremated relics.[314]
This is a larger proportion than in the primitive necropoles of Italy.

In the tombs in which burial was practised, the bodies were laid in
the trench without covering, and the remains of anything in the way
of slabs or coffins or protecting planks are very rare; in those
tombs in which cremation had been the rule, ustion had often been
very incomplete, sometimes the head and. sometimes the feet having
escaped the flames.

Similar facts are noted at Watsch, at San Margarethen, and at Vermo
in Styria, at Rovesche in Southern Carniola, and at Rosegg in the
valley of the Drave. At Watsch, but ten skeletons were found, among
two hundred examples of incineration. In the cremation sepulchres, if
we may so call them, the cinerary urn was protected by large slabs;
while in those where burial was practised, the bodies were simply
confided to the earth as at Hallstadt; but by a singular contrast, the
latter tombs contained much more important relics, the objects with
the dead being more valuable and of finer workmanship. At Rovesche,
the urn was placed in a square chest made of unhewn stones. The buried
bodies lay with the head turned toward the east, an urn was placed at
their feet, and their shrouds were kept in place by bronze fibulae,
while on the fingers were many rings of the same metal.

Lastly, to conclude this gloomy catalogue, excavations in the mounds
of Ohio and Illinois[315] have shown that there too cremation and
inhumation are met with in sepulchres which everything tends to
assign to the same race and the same period.[316] The sepulchral
crypts of Missouri contain several skeletons which had been subjected
to intense heat. The human bones were mixed with the remains of
animals, fragments of charcoal, and pieces of pottery, with sortie
flint weapons. In a neighboring mound excavations revealed no trace
of cremation; the bodies were stretched out upon the ground, and
those who discovered them picked up near them a valuable collection
of flints and of carefully made pottery. There is however nothing to
show whether those who buried and those who burnt their dead belonged
to the same race or lived at the same time. Cremation long survived
among the most savage tribes of Alaska and California, where it is
still practised, and the Indians of Florida preserve the ashes of
their fathers in human skulls. In California, the relations of the
deceased covered their faces with a thick paste of a kind of loam
mixed with the ashes of the dead, and were compelled to wear this
sign of their grief until it fell off naturally.

Although we meet with the burial of the dead either in a recumbent
or a crouching position, everywhere the minor ceremonies connected
with death are innumerable; each people, each race, indeed, having
its own custom, handed down from one generation to another, and
piously preserved intact by each successive family. Feasting was from
the earliest times a feature of the funeral ceremonies. An edict of
Charlemagne forbids eating and drinking on the tombs of the deceased,
and Saint Boniface, the apostle of Germany, complains bitterly that
the priests encouraged by their presence these feasts of death. We meet
with the same kind of thing among the lower classes at the present day,
and the cemeteries of Paris are surrounded with cafes and wine shops,
where too often grief is drowned in wine. The custom of holding these
feasts really comes down from the earliest inhabitants of Europe,
and the savage cave man gorged himself with food upon the tombs of
those belonging to him. At Aurignac, in the cave of L'HOMME MORT,
in the Trou du Frontal, broken bones and fragments of charcoal bear
witness to the repast. Similar traces of feasts are met with beneath
the dolmens and the tumuli. From the Long Barrows have been taken
the skulls and feet of bovidae, and it is probable that the other
parts of the body had been devoured by the assistants, and that
the head and feet were placed in the tomb as an offering either to
the dead or to the divinities who are supposed to have presided at
the death. In the ancient sepulchres of Wiltshire Sir R. Colt Hoare
picked up the bones of boars, stags, sheep, horses, and dogs; which
he too considered were the remains of funeral feasts.

Were feasts the only ceremonies connected with interments? We think
not. The body was often placed in the centre of the sepulchral
chamber, and around it were ranged the wives, servants, and slaves
of the deceased, condemned to follow their chief into the unknown
world to which he had gone. Beneath a dolmen of Algeria was found a
crouching skeleton with two crania lying at his feet, which crania had
doubtless belonged to victims immolated in his honor. The barrows
of Great Britain preserve traces of human sacrifices, and Caesar
says in speaking of the Gauls: "Their funerals are magnificent
and sumptuous. Everything supposed to have been dear to the defunct
during his life was flung upon the funeral pile; even his animals were
sacrificed, and until quite recently his slaves and the dependants
he had loved were burnt with him."[317]

The facts we have been noticing prove that early man cherished
hopes of immortality. All was not ended for him with death; a new
life commences beyond the tomb, marked -- for his ideas could go no
farther -- by joys similar to those he had known on earth, and events
such as had occurred during his life. What else could be the meaning
of the weapons, the tools of his craft, the vases filled with food
placed near the defunct, the ornaments and colors intended for his
adornment, the wives, slaves, and horses flung into the same tomb
or consumed upon the same pile? It is pleasing to find this supreme
hope among our remote ancestors; and clumsily as it was expressed,
it implies a belief in a being superior to man, a protecting divinity
according to some, but according to some few others a malignant
and tyrannical spirit. The proofs so far to hand are not enough to
justify us in seriously asserting that ancestors were worshipped by
prehistoric man. But the subject is too important for us to refrain
from putting before the reader such indications of this worship as
have been collected, and which are necessarily connected with the
moral and material condition of our remote ancestors.

The radius of a mammoth was discovered at Chaleux, occupying a place
of honor on a large sandstone slab near the hearth. The Chaleux Cave
dates from the Reindeer period; at which time the mammoth had long
since been extinct in Belgium, so that there can be no doubt that
the cave man had taken this bone from the alluvial deposits of the
preceding epoch, and this huge relic of an unknown creature had been
the object of his veneration, a lar or protective divinity of his
home. A somewhat similar fact was discovered at Laugerie-Basse and,
by a strange coincidence, certain tribes of North America of the
present clay preserve the bone of a mastodon or of a cetacean in
their buts as a protection to their homes.

From Paleolithic times men were in the habit of cutting celts or
hatchets in chalk, bitumen, and other fragile substances, which were
certainly of no practical use. Thousands of similar objects in harder
rock, but showing no sign of wear or tear, have also been found,
and there is little doubt that they all alike served as amulets. This
superstitious respect for certain objects lasted for many centuries,
and was handed down from one generation to another. The tombs of
the Bronze and Iron ages are often found to contain flint hatchets,
some of them broken intentionally, a proof, as I have already said,
that they were connected with funeral rites of the nature of which
we are ignorant.

We also find votive hatchets beneath dolmens. By the side of some
skeletons at Cissbury lay flint celts. A hatchet one and a quarter
feet long was found in a Lake Station of Switzerland. It was of such
friable rock that it can have been of no use but as a symbol; perhaps,
indeed, it may have been a badge of office. Lastly, Merovingian tombs
contain hundreds of small flint celts, the last pious offerings to
the departed.[318]

We find hatchets engraved on the megalithic monuments of Brittany,
on the walls of the caves of Marne, and we meet with them again on the
other side of the Atlantic, evidently bearing the same signification,
implying respect for them as. means of protection. De Longperier
has published a description of a Chaldean cylinder, on which was
represented a priest presenting his offering to a hatchet lying on a
throne, and a ring was picked up at Mykenae, on the stone of which
was engraved a double-bladed celt. We find the same idea in many
different mythologies. The word NOUTER (God) is translated in Egyptian
hieroglyphics by a sign resembling a celt, and the hatchet of Odin is
engraved on the rocks of Kivrik. On a number of Gallo-Roman CIPPI, we
find a hatchet beneath which we read the words, DIS MANIBUS, and lower
down the dedication, SUB ASCIA DEDICAVIT. At all times and everywhere
the hatchet appears as the emblem of force, and is the object of the
respect of the people. The tradition of its value and importance is
handed down from ancestors to descendants throughout many generations.

FIGURE 111

Erratic block from Scania, covered with carvings.

May we give a religious interpretation to the basins and cups hollowed
out on rocks and erratic blocks and on the so-called Roches Moutonnees,
with other monuments that have endured for many centuries (Figs. 111
and 112)? Or must we attribute them merely to passing caprice? Their
number and importance we think forbid the latter idea. We find
such blocks in Switzerland, in England, France, Italy, Portugal,
and on the frozen shores of the Baltic. They are no less numerous
in India, and they figure in the curious pictographs of the two
Americas. There is no doubt that we have here a common idea, and
one it is impossible not to recognize. How. else can we account for
the similarity of arrangement in the cup-shaped sculptures from the
tumuli of Schleswig-Holstein and those on the Indian rocks of Kamaou,
or between those of Algeria and of England?

FIGURE 112

Engraved rock from Massibert (Lozere).

In Brittany and in Scotland these cup-like sculptures are found on
rocks and menhirs, on the walls of sepulchral chambers, on stones
forming the sides of KISTVAENS, accompanied in many instances with
radiated circles, which do not, however, help us to understand them
better. In Scandinavia they are known as ELFEN STENAVS, or elf stones,
and the inhabitants come and place offerings on them for the LITTLE
PEOPLE. According to a touching tradition, these little people are
souls awaiting the time of their being clothed once more in human
flesh. In Belgium these strangely decorated stones are attributed to
the NUTONS, dwarfs who are very helpful to mortals. In every country
there is some legend sacred to the sculptured stones.

Such are the only facts we have been able to collect respecting the
religious feeling of prehistoric races. They are not sufficient to
authorize any final conclusion on the subject. At every turn we are
compelled to admit our helplessness. But yesterday this past without a
limit was absolutely unknown to us, and to-day we are but beginning to
be able to obtain a glimpse into its secrets. We have been the laborers
of the first hour, it will be for those who come after us to complete
the task we have been able but to begin. May a genuine love of truth
be to them, as we may justly claim it has been to us, the only guide.

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