Books: Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples
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The Marquis de Nadaillac >> Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples
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The remains of birds are rarer, and Broca has remarked that the most
ancient hunting implements which have come down to us; those from the
Moustier Cave, for instance, were adapted rather to attack animals that
would show fight than those that would simply fly or run away. The
Gourdan Cave, however, has yielded the bones of the moor-fowl, the
partridge, the wild duck, and even the domesticated cock And hen; the
Frontal Cave, the thrush, the duck, the partridge, and the pigeon;
and in other caves were found the bones of the goose, the swan, and
the grouse. Milne-Edwards enumerates fifty-one species belonging to
different orders found in the caves of France, and M. Riviere picked
up the remains of thousands of birds in those of Baousse-Rousse on
the frontier of Italy.[50]
The skulls of the mammals bad been opened, and the bones
split. Brains and marrow probably figured at feasts as the greatest
delicacies. Travellers, whose tales are a help to us in building up a
picture of the remote past of our race, relate that the Laplanders,
as soon as an animal is killed, break open its skull and devour the
brain whilst it is still warm and bleeding. This was probably also
the custom amongst prehistoric cave-men.
The flesh of animals was not, alas, the only meat eaten, and
excavations in different parts of the globe have led to the discovery
of traces of the practice of cannibalism which it is difficult not
to accept.[51]
Dr. Spring noticed at Chauvaux a great many bones which were nearly
all those of women and children, side by side with which lay others of
ruminants belonging to species still extant. All these bones bad alike
been subjected to great heat, and none but those which bad contained no
marrow were left unbroken. This appears an incontrovertible proof of
cannibalism, and Dr. Spring concludes that it was certainly practised
by the earliest inhabitants of Belgium. We must add, however, that
other excavations in the same cave at Chauvaux prove that it was
used as a burial-place, some skeletons being ranged in regular order
with weapons and stone implements placed beside them.[52] M. Dupont
mentions having found in the caves of the Lesse, which date from the
Reindeer period, human bones mixed with other remains of a meal. He
notes a similar fact in another cave that he considers belongs to
Neolithic times. "But," he adds, "none of these bones bear any trace
of having been struck with a flint or other tool with a view to their
fracture. If any of them are broken it is transversely, and the cause
of the fracture has been merely the weight of the earth above them;
moreover, they show no trace of the action of fire."[53] M. Dupont,
therefore, still retains some doubt of the cannibalism of the cave-men
of the valley of the Lesse, and attributes the presence of the bones of
the dead amongst the rubbish of all kinds accumulated by the living,
to their idleness and indifference. One example at the present day
tends to confirm this opinion, for travellers tell us of the same
revolting carelessness amongst the Esquimaux, who cannot certainly
be classed amongst cannibals.
The Abbe Chierici, speaking at the Brussels Congress[54] of the
excavations in one of the Reggio caves, remarked that human bones
were mixed with those of animals, and that both showed traces of
having been burnt. These bones date from the Neolithic period, and
with them were picked up various objects of remarkable workmanship,
including fragments of pottery, half a grindstone for crushing grain,
and some admirably polished serpentine hatchets.
Other facts leave no doubt of the cannibalism of the earliest
inhabitants of Italy. Moreover, hesitation on this point is
impossible for other reasons, as Roman historians allude to the
practice. Pliny,[55] in saying how little removed was a human sacrifice
from a meal, adds, that it ought not to surprise us to meet with this
monstrous custom amongst barbarian races, as it prevailed in ancient
times in Italy and Sicily.
It is generally admitted that we can tell whether the fracture of long
bones was intentional by the way in which they were broken. This fact,
which is true alike with the bones of men and of animals, is the most
important proof we have of the cannibalism of the men of the Stone
age. To the examples already given, we can easily add others culled
from France. In the Pyrenees and in the caves of Lourdes and Gourdan,
for instance, human bones have been found mixed with the cinders and
ashes of the hearth, and still bearing the marks of the implements
with which they were broken.
At Bruniquel a human skull was found which had been opened in the
same way as the heads of ruminants amongst which it was picked up, and
on its external surface were deep notches, which appear to have been
made with a flint hatchet. Similar traces of revolting feasts on human
flesh are not at all rare; near Paris, at Villeneuve-Saint-Georges,
and at Varenne-Saint-Maur, for instance.[56]
The excavations in the Montesquieu-Avantes Cave, about six miles from
Saint-Girons, have brought to light a hearth covered over with a layer
of stalagmite; numerous fragments of human bones, crania, femora,
tibiae, humeri, and radii were found in this layer, and in that of the
subjacent clay. In many cases the medullary orifice had been enlarged
to make it easier to get out the marrow. It is impossible to attribute
this to a rodent, for the bones gnawed by animals of that kind present
a regular series of marks. The conclusion is inevitable: these bones,
alike of men and of animals, were the remains of a meal.[57]
In Kent's Hole, the celebrated cave in Devonshire, amongst many objects
dating from the Stone age, were found some human bones bearing traces
of having been gnawed by man. The eminent anthropologist, Owen, came
to a similar conclusion -- that cannibalism had been practised --
after examining the jaw-bone of a child found in Scotland; and so did
the Rev. F. Porter, after the excavations near Scarborough, where
several skeletons were found under a tumulus, which had apparently
been thrown where they were discovered by accident.
The Cesareda caves in Portugal have yielded some bones split
lengthwise; and beneath the dolmen near the village of Hammer, in
Denmark, human bones and those of stags have been found half gnawed,
and showing only too clearly the origin of the marks upon them. Worsaae
quotes similar facts at Borreby, Chantres refers to the same thing in
the caves of the Caucasus, Captain Burton at Beitsahur, near Jerusalem,
Wiener in the SAMBAQUIS of Brazil, even in deposits which he considers
of recent origin.[58]
Brazil is not the only part of the American continent in which we find
traces of the use of this revolting food. In the kitchen-middings of
Florida Wyman found human bones, which had been intentionally broken,
mixed with those of deer and beavers. The marrow had been taken from
all of them and eaten by man. Yet more recent discoveries of a similar
kind have been made in New England.[59]
We must, however, add that many of these facts are contested. Every
people considers it a point of honor to repudiate the idea that its
ancestors fed on human flesh, and yet everywhere history tells us
of the practice of cannibalism. Herodotus speaks of it amongst the
Androphagae and the Issedones, people of Scythian origin; Aristotle
amongst the races living on the borders of the Pontus Euxinus;
Diodorus Siculus amongst the Galatians; and Strabo, in his turn,
says: "The Irish, more savage than the Bretons, are cannibals and
polyphagous; they consider it an honor to eat their parents soon
after life is extinct."[60]
From the ancient tombs of Georgia have been taken human bones that
have been boiled or charred, which were doubtless those of the victims
eaten by the assistants in the FETES which have ever accompanied
funeral rites.
In the fourth century of our era Jerome speaks of having met in Gaul
with the Attacotes, descended from a savage Scotch tribe, who fed on
human flesh, and that though they possessed great herds of cattle and
flocks of sheep, with numbers of pigs, for whom their vast forests
afforded excellent grazing grounds[61]; and though the Scandinavian
kitchen-middings have not so far yielded any traces of the practice of
cannibalism, Adam of Bremen, who preached Christianity at the court
of King Sweyn Ulfson, represents the Danes of his day as barbarians
clad in the skins of beasts, chasing the aurochs and the eland,
unable to do more than imitate the cries of animals and devouring
the flesh of their fellow-men.[62]
Nothing could exceed the barbarity of the Mexican sacrifices, the
numbers of the victims, and the refinements of torture to which they
were subjected. Prisoners, who had often been fattened for months
previously, perished by thousands on the altars. The palpitating flesh
was distributed amongst the assistants, and a horrible custom compelled
the priests to clothe themselves in the still bleeding skins of the
unfortunate wretches, and to wear them until they rotted to pieces.
Without going back to an antiquity so remote, in how many different
regions of Africa and America, and in how many islands of Polynesia
have not our sailors and missionaries reported the practice
of cannibalism in our own day? It is difficult, therefore, not to
believe, although the fact cannot perhaps be very distinctly proved,
that the first inhabitants of Europe degraded as were the conditions
of their existence, did eat human flesh and acquire a depraved taste
for it; impelled thereto not only by the pangs of hunger, but also
by a revolting superstition.
Animals, however, were very plentiful all around. Stags, elks, aurochs,
horses, and the large pachyderms multiplied very rapidly in the wide
solitudes, the pasture lands of which afforded them a constantly
renewed supply of food, and the beasts of prey in their turn found an
easy prey in the ruminants.[63] The ways of animals do not change, and
the travellers who are exploring the interior of Africa tell us that
now, as in the day we are trying to recall, hundreds of elephants and
rhinoceroses congregate in a limited area, whilst innumerable herds
of giraffes, zebras, and gazelles graze peacefully in the presence
of man, whose destructive powers they have not yet learnt to dread.
Delegorgue speaks of one lake peopled by more than one hundred
hippopotami, and of a region less than three miles in diameter
containing six hundred elephants. Livingstone tells us that he
saw troops of more than four thousand antelopes pass at a time,
and that these animals showed absolutely no fear. We may give a yet
more curious instance. Captain Gordon Cumming, crossing the plains
stretching away on the north of the Cape, saw troops of gazelles and
antelopes, compelled by a long drought to migrate in search of the
water indispensable to them, and be describes with enthusiasm one of
these migrations, telling us that the plain was literally covered
with animals, the hurrying herds defiling before him in an endless
stream. On the evening of the same day, a yet more numerous herd
passed by in the same direction, the numbers of which were absolutely
incalculable, but which, according to Cumming, must have exceeded
several hundred thousand.
Such must have been animal life in Europe in Quaternary times. "Grand
indeed," cries Hugh Miller, "was the fauna of the British Isles in
those days. Tigers, as large again as the biggest Asiatic species,
lurked in the ancient thickets; elephants, of nearly twice the bulk of
the largest individuals that now exist in Africa or Ceylon, roamed in
herds; at least two species of rhinoceros forced their way through the
primeval forest, and the lakes and rivers were tenanted by hippopotami
as bulky and with as great tusks as those of Africa."[64]
Material proofs of the presence of animals are not wanting. The
accumulation of coprolites in the cave of Sentenheim (Alsace) bears
witness to the number of bears which once haunted it. Nordmann took
from a cave near Odessa 4,500 bones of ursidae, associated with
no less numerous relics of the large cave-lion and cave-hyena.[65]
The Kulock Cave, now some six hundred and fifty feet above the river,
contained the remains of no less than 2,500 bears, and similar relics
occur by thousands in the osseous breccia of Santenay and in the
cave of Lherm, where they form a regular ossuary. It would be easy
to quote similar facts from Belgian, German, and Hungarian caves. In
almost every case the position of the skeletons seems to show that the
bears sought a last refuge in the caves, and that death had surprised
them during their winter sleep. Pachyderms were no less numerous than
bears. The remains of mammoths are found from the north of Europe to
Greece and Spain, and we meet with them in Algeria, ,gyp Asia from
the Altai Mountains to the Arctic Ocean, and in America in Mexico
and Kentucky. They seem to have entrenched themselves especially in
Siberia, whence tusks are still exported as an article of commerce. In
the extreme North, those parts of Wrangel's Land which have been
explored are strewn with the bones of mastodons, and in some parts of
Sonora and Columbia these remains form almost inexhaustible deposits.
Animals of the cervine and equine groups were, if possible, yet more
numerous. M. Piette estimates the number of reindeer whose bones he
has picked up in the Gourdan Cave as over. 3,000, and the number of
cervidae found at Hohlefels is positively incalculable.
In 1826, Marcel de Serres called attention to the great number of the
bones of animals of the equine family found in the neighborhood of
Lunel-Viel; at Solutre, the remains of horses cover a great portion
of the slope which stretches from. the eastern side of the mountain
to the bottom of the valley. Here are found those vast accumulations
to which the inhabitants of the valley give the characteristic name
of HORSE-WALLS. The number of horses, the bones of which have gone to
form these walls, may be estimated without exaggeration at 40,000. The
bones are mixed together in the greatest confusion, many of them show
traces of having been burnt, and the flesh of the horse was evidently
the favorite diet of the people of Solutre.[66]
At first man obtained by force, often aided by strategy, the animals
he coveted. He bad not yet learnt to tame them and reduce them to
servitude. Neither the reindeer nor the horse was as yet domesticated,
and neither in the caves nor in the various deposits elsewhere has a
complete skeleton been found, but only -- a very significant fact --
the bones on which had been the greater amount of flesh. The absence
of any remains of the dog, so indispensable an animal in the keeping of
flocks, is yet another proof that domestication was still unpractised.
It was with most miserable weapons, such as a few stones, scarcely
even rough-hewn, and a few flint arrows, that the cave-man did
not hesitate to attack the most formidable animals, and with such
apparently inadequate means he succeeded in wounding and even killing
them. The French Museum possesses mammoth and rhinoceros bones bearing
fine scratches produced by the weapons which had been used to despatch
the animals. The metacarpus of a large beast of prey, found at Eyzies,
retains marks no less clear, and the skull of a bear front Nabrigas
has in it a large wound which must have been made by a missile of
some kind.
In Ireland a stone hammer was found wedged into the head of a CERVUS
MEGACEROS; in Cambridgeshire, the skull of an URSUS SPELAEUS still
containing the fragment of a celt which had given the animal his
deathblow; at Richmond (Yorkshire) the bones of a large deer which
had been sawn with a flint implement. The fine collection in the
University of Lund, contains a vertebra of a urns pierced by an arrow,
and the Copenhagen Museum, the jaw of a stag pierced by a fragment
of flint. Steenstrup mentions two bones of a large stag into which
stone chips had penetrated deeply, and in which the fracture had been
gradually covered over by the bony tissue. A bone of some bovine animal
with an arrow deeply imbedded in it has been taken from a bed of peat
in the island of Moen, celebrated for its tumuli and the number of
objects found in them. At Eyzies, a flint flake has been found firmly
fixed in one of the lumbar vertebrae of a young reindeer, and M. de
Baye mentions an arrow with a tranverse edge stuck in the bone of a
badger.[67] The Abbe Ducrost found a flint arrow-head sticking in a
vertebra of a horse.
Nor were those already mentioned the only animals on which man made
war. We shall speak presently of the contests with each other, which
began amongst men in the very earliest days of humanity. Human bones,
perforated by arrows and broken by stone hatchets, bear ineffaceable
traces to this day of homicidal struggles.
In many places fresh-water and marine fish were utilized as food
by man. In the numerous caves of the Vezere, in those of Madeleine,
Eyzies, and Bruniquel, excavations have brought to light the vertebrae
and other bones of fishes, amongst which predominate chiefly those
of the jack, the carp, the bream, the drub, the trout, and the
tench -- in a word, all the fish which still people our rivers and
lakes. In the Lake Stations of Switzerland, fish of all kinds are
no less abundant. At Gardeole, amongst the bones of mammals have
been found the shells of mollusca, and remains of the turtle. and of
goldfish. Fish was not, however, caught by all these primitive people,
not even by all those who lived by the sea. In researches carefully
carried on for years in the Maritime-Alps, M. Riviere found neither
fishing-tackle nor fish-lines.
Whilst the cave-men of the south of France seem not to have utilized
any but fresh-water fish, the Scandinavians, at a date probably
less remote however, did not hesitate to brave the ocean. The
kitchen-middings contain numerous remains of fish, amongst which those
of the mackerel, the dab, and the herring are the most numerous. There,
too, we meet with relics of the cod, which never approaches the coast,
and must always be sought by the fisherman in the open sea.
Although we are in a position to assert that men were able to catch
fish during every prehistoric period, if not in every locality, we
can speak less positively of their mode of doing so. The earliest
fishing-tackle was doubtless of the most primitive description: the
bone of some animal, a fragment of hard wood, or even a fish-bone
pointed at each end and pierced with a hole, served their purpose
(Fig. 10). The Exhibition of Fishing-Tackle held at Berlin in 1880
contained several such implements, some of wood, others of bone. Others
have also been found in the Madeleine Cave, and in different stations
of the ancient inhabitants of Switzerland. It is interesting to note
their resemblance to those still in use amongst the Esquimaux.
FIGURE 10
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-hook; pointed
at each end, from Wangen.
Prehistoric mail also turned to account the teeth of animals. We
may quote in this connection the molars of a bear from which the
enamel and the crown have been removed, and the thickness of which
has been lessened by rubbing (Fig. 11). The small flints picked up
in great numbers in the department of the Gironde also date from a
remote antiquity; they are sixteen millimetres long by four wide,
and though we cannot assert it as a fact, they are supposed to have
been used for catching fish.
FIGURE 11
Bears' teeth converted into fish-hooks.
FIGURE 12
Fish-hook made out of a boar's tusk.
The Museum of Lund possesses two flint fish-books of a curved shape,
one of them, which is four centimetres long by nearly three wide,
was found by the seashore; the other and smaller one came front
the shores of Lake Kranke.[68] Fish-hooks made of bone, which is
more easily worked than flint, very soon replaced those in that
material. They are numerous in the Lake Stations of Wangen, Mooseedorf,
and St. Aubin. Some are cut out of the horns of oxen, others of stags'
antlers; while others again are made of boars' tusks (Fig. 12), but
all alike greatly resemble modern forms. The peat-bogs of Scania have
yielded a bone fish-hook seven centimetres long, which is considered
very ancient, and the Museum of Stettin possesses one, also very
old, found in a gnarly deposit of Pomerania. We must not forget to
mention, although it probably belongs to a much more recent period,
a fish-hook in reindeer horn, now in the Christiania Museum. It was
found in a tomb in the island of Kjelnoe, not far from the Russian
frontier. Numerous skeletons, wrapped up in swathings of birch-bark,
repose in this tomb. All around lay fragments of pottery, lance-
and arrow-heads,[69] and combs of reindeer horn, the date of which
it is impossible to fix exactly.
In America, stone fish-hooks are rare. The most ancient are of
bone, and resemble those now in use. They have been picked up in
Dakota, and in the cinderheaps of Madisonville (Ohio), in Indiana,
in Arkansas, on the shores of Lake Erie, and in a kitchen-midding of
Long Island. The greater number of them are polished, and some of
them have near the top a hole by which they could be fastened to a
line or cord. The fish-hooks of California are remarkable for their
rounded forms and sharply curved points; the top was covered with a
thick layer of asphalt to which the line was probably fastened. They
are numerous in all the islands of the Pacific coast. In that of
Santa Cruz Schumacker excavated a tomb which must have been that of
a fish-hook manufacturer, for care had been taken to place near the
deceased, not only the implements of his craft, but also a number of
fish-hooks in various stages of advancement. The Californians used the
shells of the MYTILUS CALIFORNICUS and HALIOTIS to make fish-hooks, and
these were even more curved than those made of bone. The shape seems
but little suited for fishing, but even in our own day the natives of
the Samoa Islands use similar tackle with great success. The Indians
of the northwest coast make fish-hooks of epicea wood, and those of
Arizona utilize for the same purpose the long spikes of the cactus. It
is very probable that European as well as American races knew how to
use wood in the same manner. During the lapse of centuries, however,
these fragile objects have been reduced to dust, and we are unable
to make any further conjectures on the subject.
The use of bronze, the first metal to be generally employed,
does not seem to have introduced any great modifications in
fishing-tackle. Bronze fish-hooks are, however, thinner and lighter
than those in other materials, and resemble those in use amongst
fishermen at the present day. A certain number have been found in
the Lake Stations of Switzerland, in lakes Peschiera and Bourget,
as well as in Scotland, Ireland, and the island of Funen off the
coast of Denmark. We must not omit to mention the important foundry
of Larnaud, or the CACHE of Saint-Pierre-en-Chatre, both so rich in
bronze objects. In America, where the copper mines of Lake Superior
were worked at a remote antiquity, a few rare copper fish-hooks have
been found, the greater number in the Ancon necropolis.[70] Gold
fish. hooks are comparatively more numerous, and have been discovered
in New Granada and the Cauca State.[71] One of these was found some
forty-nine feet below the surface of the ground, and as there is no
trace of disturbance, we cannot assign to it a recent origin. The
gold fish-hooks are about four inches long, and look like big pins
with the lower end bent back upon the upper.
Other fishing implements were also used by out- prehistoric
ancestors. At Laugerie-Basse a rough drawing shows us a man striking
with a harpoon a fish that is trying to escape. These harpoons were
generally made of reindeer horn (Figs. 10 and 13). Some had but one
barb, others several. One of the largest was found in the Madeleine
Cave; it is eight inches long, and has three barbs on one side and
five on the other. Most of these weapons have a notch in the handle,
with the help of which they could be firmly fastened to a spear or
lance. Different fashions prevailed in different localities, and
sinews, leather thongs, roughly plaited cords, creepers, and resinous
substances were often pressed into the service.
FIGURE 13
A, a large barbed arrow from one side of the Plantade shelter
(Tarn-et-Garonne). B, lower part of a barbed harpoon from the Plantade
deposit.
Many harpoons have been found in the caves of the south of France;
others come from Belgium, from Keyserloch in Germany, Kent's Hole in
England, from Conches, Wauwyl, and Concise in Switzerland. Excavations
in Victoria Cave, near Settle (Yorkshire), yielded amongst other
interesting objects a bone harpoon cut to a point and with two barbs on
either side. On the banks of the Uswiata, a little Polish river flowing
into the Dnieper, two harpoons made out of the horns of some bovine
animal were found, both in perfect preservation, and with several
barbs.[72] Count Ouvaroff, in an excellent work published a little
before his death, mentions a bone spear from the shores of the Oka, and
Madsen and Montelius speak of Scandinavian harpoons. These weapons must
have been especially useful in the North during the severe frosts of
winter. The fisherman made a hole in the ice and struck the fish with
his harpoon when the poor creatures came up to the surface to breathe.
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