Books: Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples

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From the most remote times the Americans knew how to make and use
harpoons. As many as twenty. eight different kinds are known.[73] In
some the barbs are bilateral, but most of them have them on one side
only. Some, however, are made of stag or elk horn, and one harpoon
from Maine is made of whalebone. A harpoon-point found near Detroit
(Michigan) is nearly a foot long by one inch thick. Excavations in
a rock shelter in Alaska yielded a harpoon which lay side by side
with some of the most ancient Quaternary mammals of America. A good
many copper harpoon-heads are also mentioned; one of the largest from
Wisconsin is ten inches long. Others have been found in the island of
Santa Barbara (California) and in Tierra del Fuego, where the natives
of the present day still use similar ones. These harpoons with barbs
are by no means simple weapons, the idea of which would naturally
occur to the human mind, so that it is really extremely strange
to find weapons so entirely similar in regions so different and so
widely separated from one another. This constant similitude in the
working of the genius of man is, as We shall never tire of repeating,
one of the most striking facts revealed by prehistoric researches.

Herodotus tells that the Poeni (Carthaginians) plunged baskets into
the water and drew them up full of fish. It is probable that the Lake
Dwellers of Helvetia employed a similar process, but these ancient
Swiss were already more advanced than that. They knew how to cultivate
hemp, to spin it, and to make nets of it; the remains of some of these
nets have often of late years been taken from the beds of the lakes.

It is almost impossible to class with any certainty the numerous Lake
Stations of Switzerland. Some few certainly date from the Stone age,
others from the transition period, between it and that of the early
use of metals, or even from the Bronze age. As therefore they have
been occupied at different times by different people, some of them
having even been still in use in the time of the Romans, it is most
difficult to fix with any precision the date to which belong the
various objects mixed together beneath the deep waters of the lakes. We
can only say that the nets differ very much in the size of the meshes,
and the thickness of the rope used. Those found at Robenhausen are
very like those in use in France at the present day. There has, in
fact, been no advance in the art of making fishing-tackle since the
remote days of the Lake Dwellers.

We are ignorant of the mode of manufacture of prehistoric nets. Did
the Lake Dwellers, as some archaeologists are disposed to think, use
a loom? Did they use shuttles and rollers such as are employed by the
Esquimaux and Californians of the present day? It is impossible to
say, but it is supposed that the bears' teeth sharpened to a point,
found in some stations, were used to tighten the meshes. These meshes
were generally square, and each one was finished of with a knot of
the same size at each intersection.

The lead weights so indispensable to fishermen of the present
day for sinking the nets, were represented in prehistoric times by
stones. These stones, which are drilled or notched, are found in all
the Lake Stations. The fragments of pottery pierced with a hole found
at Schussenried, a Lake Station of the Stone age on the Feder-See
(Wurtemburg), were probably used for the same purpose. In some of
the Swiss Lake Stations have also been found pieces of wood and cork,
pierced with one or more holes, which had certainly served as floats.

Numerous stone implements of the most primitive forms, often of rock
not native to the country, have been found in some of the islands
of Greece, as well as in Corsica, Sardinia, Elba, and Sicily. These
discoveries bear witness to the presence of man in these islands at
a very remote antiquity, though no other traces of the existence of
prehistoric human beings have as yet been found there. These men can
only have reached the islands by way of the sea. Boats were the only
means of communication between the Lake Dwellers of Switzerland and
the mainland, and, as we have seen, the ancient Scandinavians hunted
fish on the deep ocean. We must therefore admit that attempts at
navigation were made in the very earliest days of humanity. Alan,
impelled by necessity, or perhaps only by curiosity, was not afraid
to launch his bark, first upon the rivers, and later upon the more
formidable waves of the sea

Illi robur et aes triplex
Circa pectus erat, qui fragilem truci
Commisit pelago ratem
Primus.[74]

The Latin poet is right, and we cannot but admire those who were the
first to brave the terrors of the deep and the horrors of the tempest;
for they were gifted alike with the intelligence which conceives,
the courage that dares, and the strength that achieves.

Trees torn up by the roots by the force of the waters, and floating
on the surface of those waters, naturally attracted the attention
of primeval man, and the first boats were doubtless the trunks of
such trees roughly squared and then hollowed out with the help of
fire. Later experience led to the addition of a prow which would
more easily cleave the water, and a stern which would serve as a
pivot. These canoes, if such a name may be already given to them,
were at first guided by branches stripped of their leaves, or with
long poles. Then oars or paddles were introduced, which are better for
beating the water, and in later barks traces have been made out of what
is supposed to have been a mast, indicating the use of a sail. The art
of navigation may now be said to have been inaugurated. In different
parts of Europe have been found boats which certainly belong to
very remote times, though their exact date cannot be fixed. Their
construction greatly resembles that of the pirogues of the Polynesians,
or the kayaks of the Greenlanders. One of the most ancient, now in the
Berlin Provincial Museum, was taken from a peat-bog of Brandenburg.[75]
It is 27 feet long and scarcely 16 inches wide.

Sir W. Wilde describes several boats from the marshes and peat-bogs of
Ireland,[76] many of which have handles cut in the wood at the ends,
by the help of which they could easily be dragged along overland. Sir
W. Wilde adds that the Irish also used CURRAGHS, or CORACLES, which
were mere wicker frames covered with the skins of oxen. These frail
barks introduce us to a new mode of navigation; they are met with
not only in tire different countries of Europe, but also in America,
and were in use there in pre-Columbian times. Even more interesting
examples have been found in Scotland.[77] Towards the close of last
century a pirogue was taken from the ancient bed of the Clyde at
Glasgow. Since then have been discovered, at depths varying from six
to twelve feet, more than twenty similar boats. The deposits in which
they lay had formerly been beneath the sea, but are now some twenty
feet above the level of the ocean. Great changes have therefore taken
place since these barks were launched upon the waves.[78] Their mode
of construction is an excellent indication of the date to which they
belong. Some which are hollowed out of the trunks of oaks by the
help of fire, or with a blunt tool, are supposed by Lyell to date
from the Stone age. Others have clean-cut notches, evidently made
with metal implements. Some are made of planks joined together with
wooden pegs, and one canoe found in County Galway even contained
copper nails. Most of the boats from the bed of the Clyde seem to
have foundered in still waters. Some, however, were discovered in a
vertical position, others had the keel uppermost, and these latter
had evidently sunk in a storm. In one of these boats was a diorite
hatchet of the kind characteristic of Neolithic times; another,
the wood of which was perfectly black, had become as hard as marble,
and in it was a cork plug. Then, as now, the oak which yields cork
was foreign to the cold climate of Scotland.

We will quote but one of the discoveries made in England. In
1881 a canoe, hollowed out of the trunk of a tree, was found at
Bovey-Tracey in Devonshire. It lay in a deposit of brick-earth more
than twenty-nine feet below the highest level reached by the waters
of the Bovey.[79] It was more than thirty-five inches wide, and its
length could not be exactly determined, the workmen having broken it
in getting it out. An eminent archaeologist is of opinion that this
boat dates from the Glacial epoch, perhaps even from a more remote
time. If this hypothesis, the responsibility of which we leave to
him, be correct, this is the most ancient witness in existence of
prehistoric navigation. We must also mention a boat found near Brigg
(Lincolnshire), a few feet from a little river that flows into the
Humber. It is about forty-five feet long by three and a half feet wide,
and is some three feet high. The prow is fluted. There are no traces
of a mast, though the size of the boat must have made it difficult
to manage with oars alone.

One of the pirogues preserved at the Copenhagen Museum is made of one
half of the trunk of a tree, some six feet long, hollowed into the
shape of a trough, and cut straight at both ends.[80] It is curious to
compare this clumsy structure with a boat recently discovered beneath
a tumulus at Gogstadten in Norway (Fig. 14), of which, though it dates
from historic times, we give a drawing, as it is a good illustration
of the progress made. The dead Viking had been laid in his boat,
as the most glorious of tombs; with its prow pointing seawards, for
would not the first thoughts of the chief when he awoke in another
life be of the sea which had witnessed his triumphs? The sides of
the boat, which was more than sixty-six feet long and fifteen across
the widest part, were painted, and around it was ranged a series of
shields lapping over one another like the scales of a fish, and not
unlike the designs seen in the celebrated Bayeux tapestry. A block of
oak intended to receive the mast was placed in the centre of the boat,
and near the skeleton were oars some fifteen feet long and similar
in form to those now in use.

FIGURE 14

Ancient Scandinavian boat found beneath a tumulus at Gogstadten.

Inlaying the foundations of the bridge of Les Invalides, Paris, a boat
was taken out of the mud which had lain there for many centuries. Like
most of those already mentioned, it had been made out of a single
trunk roughly squared. Everywhere, we must repeat once again, man's
original ideas were the same; everywhere the tree floating on the top
of the water excited his curiosity, and became the starting-point for
one of his most important discoveries. Traces of similar attempts
at navigation are met with in other parts of France; a canoe was
found in the Loire near Saint Mars, and the Dijon Museum possesses
another from the same river, the latter some sixteen feet long, and
traces have been made out of what are supposed to have been seats,
but may have been mere contrivances for strengthening the boat. A
canoe taken last year from the bed of the Cher is of the shape of a
trough closed at the end by pieces of wood fixed by means of vertical
grooves. The prow had been shaped in the first instance in the trunk
itself, and it was probably owing to an accident, a collision perhaps,
that it had had to be mended in this way (Fig. 15).

FIGURE 15

Ancient boat discovered in the bed of the Cher.

The Lake Dwellers of Switzerland owned boats from the time of their
first settlement in their water homes. One of them found at Robenhausen
is more than ten feet long, and is very shallow, varying from six to
eight inches. Like most of those already mentioned, it was hollowed
out of the trunk of a tree, bulging out towards the centre, and
rounded at the ends. So far none but stone tools have been found at
the station of Robenhausen, so that we must presume that it was with
such tools that the boat was made. The lakes of Bienne and. Geneva,
and the stations of Morges and Estavayer have also yielded boats
which are doubtless less ancient than those of which I have just
spoken. In nearly all of them the prow is curiously pointed. One of
them from the Lake of Neuchatel, large enough to bold twelve people,
has a beak at the stern and a rounded prow; but there is no sign of
any contrivance for keeping the oars in place.

Lastly, a boat bas been found in Switzerland some 3,900 feet above
the valley of the Rhine, but no one can say how it came to be at such
a height.

FIGURE 16

A lake pirogue found in the Lake of Neuchatel. 1. As seen from the
outside. 2 and 3. Longitudinal and transverse sections.

These canoes, whatever their shape or size, can only have been worked
by means of oars, yet oars have seldom been found. The Geneva Museum,
however, has one which came from the muddy bed of an Italian lake,
and others are preserved in the Royal Museum of Dublin, which have
every sign of great antiquity. In de fault of the actual oars, we
have other proofs of their use. Gross[81] mentions a boat (Fig. 16) in
which holes had been made in the upper parts of the sides to hold the
oars. In 1882 a pirogue was taken out of the bed of the Rhone at Cordon
(Ain), which had been half buried in the mud of the river. The wood
was black and the upper portions were charred, but the middle part was
still intact and very hard. The holes, pierced in the sides at regular
intervals, may have served to keep the oars in place. The position of
the rowers at the bottom of the boat was very unsatisfactory. It was
not, however, until later that we find seats so placed as to enable
the rowers to put out all their strength. At a recent meeting of
the Anthropological Society (July 21, 1887) M. Letourneau observed
that the rudder came into use very slowly. It was not known to the
Egyptians or to the Phoenicians, nor, which is still more strange,
to the Greeks and Romans. Their vessels, whatever their size, were
guided by two large oars (GUBERNACULUM) placed in the stern. The
Chinese appear to have been the only people who were acquainted with
the use of the rudder from time immemorial. It is probable that from
them it passed to the Arabs and even perhaps to the people of Europe.

A discovery made near Abbeville is the most ancient example we have of
the use of the mast. Some works being executed at the fortifications of
the town, brought to light a boat which must have been some twenty-one
feet long. Two projections form part of the planking, leaving between
them a rectangular space in which the mast was probably fixed.[82]

Professor Gastaldi speaks of a wooden anchor taken from a peat-bog
near Arona, beneath which was a pile dwelling. He dates it from the
tinge when the use of bronze was already beginning to spread in the
north of Italy. A stone of peculiar shape found at Niddau is, they
say, an ANKERSTEIN (anchor stone). This name is also given by Friedel
to a good-sized round lump of sandstone with a deep groove near the
middle. Lastly, Kerviler, in crossing a basin of the Bay of Penhouet,
near Saint-Nazaire, found several stones which had evidently been
used to keep boats at anchor, and with the aid of which we can get
an idea of the methods employed by ancient navigators (Fig. 17).

FIGURE 17

Stones used as anchors, found in the Bay of Penhouet. 1, 2, 3,
stones weighing about 160 pounds each. 4 and 5, lighter stones,
probably used for canoes.

Such are the only details we have on the important subject of
prehistoric anchors, but we may add that ancient fishermen probably
ventured but a short distance from the land, and would not need
anchors, as they could easily carry their light boats on shore.

We leave now passed in review the conditions of the life of our
remote ancestors, noting the animals that were their contemporaries,
and the fish that peopled the watercourses near which they lived. We
have studied the earliest efforts at navigation, made in the pursuit
of fish, and we must now go back to examine the weapons, tools, and
ornaments of these ancient peoples, and trace in those objects the
dawn of art. This will be the aim of our next chapter.

CHAPTER III

Weapons, Tools, Pottery; Origin of the Use of Fire, Clothing,
Ornaments; Early Artistic Efforts.

The Vedas show us Indra, armed with a wooden club, seizing a stone with
which to pierce Vritra, the genius of evil.[83] Does not this call up
a picture of the earliest days of man upon the earth? His first weapon
was doubtless a knotty branch torn from a tree as be hurried past,
or a stone picked up from amongst those lying at his feet. These were,
however, but feeble means with which to contend with formidable feline
and pachydermatous enemies. Man bad not their great physical strength;
he was not so fleet a runner as many of them; his nails and teeth
were useless to him, either for attack or defence; his smooth skin
was not enough protection even from the rigor of the climate. Such
inequality must very quickly have led to the defeat of man, had not
God given to him two marvellous instruments: the brain which conceives,
and the hand which executes. To brute force man opposed intelligence,
a glorious struggle in which he was sure to come off victorious, for in
the words of Victor Hugo, "Ceci devait tuer cela." The huge animals of
Quaternary times have disappeared for ever, whilst plan has survived,
victor over Nature herself. Even before his birth, an immutable decree
had ordained that nothing on the earth should check his development.

Man alone amongst the countless creatures around him knew anything
of the past, and he alone was able to predict the future. Even apes,
however great the intelligence that may be attributed to them, have
remained very much what they were from the first. In vain has one
generation succeeded another; they still obey the dictates of their
brutal instincts, as their ancestors did before them; and if apes
continue to propagate their species thousands of years hence they
will remain what we see them to be now. Dogs, too, will remain dogs,
elephants will continue to be elephants; beavers will make their dams
exactly like those of the present day, wasps will never learn to make
honey as bees do, and bees will never be able, like ants, to bring up
plant-lice to be their servants, or to enslave other families. Their
instincts are incapable of progress, and in their earliest efforts they
reach the limit assigned to them by the Eternal Wisdom. To man alone
has it been given to understand what has been done by his predecessors,
to walk more firmly in the path along which they groped, to pronounce
clearly the words they stammered. Without a doubt we descend from the
men who lived in the midst of primeval forests, or amongst stagnant
marshes, dwelling in caves, for the possession of which they often
bad to fight with the wild beasts around them. These men, however,
knew that one result achieved would lead to another, if similar
means were used; they saw that a pointed stone would inflict a deeper
wound than a blunt one on the animal they hunted, and therefore they
learnt to sharpen stones artificially; the skins of beasts, flung over
their shoulders, protected them from cold, and they learned to make
garments; seeds sprouted around them, and they learned to plant them;
they noticed the effect of heat upon metals, and tried to mix them;
wild animals wandered around them, and they learned to reduce them to
slavery. Every bit of knowledge won, and every progress made, became
the starting-point for fresh acquisitions, fresh advances, which
thenceforth remained forever the common heritage of the human race.

It was thus that experience early taught our remote ancestors that
rock chips more easily under the blows of a hammer when fresh from the
quarry; and everywhere men learnt to choose the stone best suited to
their purpose. For hatchets, wedges, and hammers, they used jade and
kindred substances, such as fibrolite, diorite, acrd basalt, which were
at the same time extremely durable, and very impervious to blows. For
spear- and arrow-heads, knives, saws, and all instruments requiring
sharp points and cutting edges, they employed quartz, jaspar, agate,
and obsidian, according to the situation of the worker; all these
materials, though extremely hard, being easily split into thin sharp
flakes. The blocks of stone were very methodically cut up; they were,
in fact, to use a very appropriate expression of M. Dupont's, scaled
(ECAILLES). We give drawings of a few of these implements (Figs. 18,
19, and 20), which illustrate the earliest efforts of lean, efforts
which may be looked upon as the starting-point of all those industries
which in the course of centuries have developed results which it is
impossible to contemplate without astonishment.

FIGURE 18

Scraper from the Delaware Valley.

FIGURE 19

Implement from the Delaware Valley.

The host ancient tools which have come down to us were clumsy and
heavy, cut on both sides and pointed (Fig. 20). They may vary in
material, in size, and in finish, but they can always be easily
recognized.[84] Were they man's only weapons? We hesitate to believe
it, and the careful researches of M. d'Acy add to our incredulity.[85]
He tells us that at Saint-Acheul, which was the very cradle of these
strange discoveries, the almond shape is found mixed with the pointed
amongst the Moustier flints, so that what is true in one place is not
in another, and any general conclusion would certainly be premature.

FIGURE 20

Worked flints from the Lafaye and Plantade shelters (Tarn-et-Garonne).

It would take us a long time to enumerate the countries where tools
of the Chelleen[86] type have been found. They are met with in the
valleys of the rivers of France, now imbedded in the flinty alluvium,
now strewn upon the surface of the soil. Though rare in Germany,
they are found in abundance in the southeast of England, and it is
to this period that must be assigned the discoveries at Hoxne, and in
the basins of the Thames, the Ouse, and the Avon. Similar discoveries
have been frequent in Italy, Spain, Algeria, and Hindostan. Dr. Abbott
speaks of the finding of such implements in the glacial alluvium of
the Delaware (Figs. 18 and 19), Miss Babitt in the alluvial deposits of
the Mississippi, Mr. Haynes in New Hampshire, Mr. Holmes in Colombia,
and other explorers in the basin of the Bridget and at Guanajuato
in Mexico. Everywhere these implements are identical in shape and
in mode of construction, and very often they are associated with the
bones of animals of extinct species.

Sometimes these Chelleen tools (the French call them COUPS DE POING)
have retained at the base a projection to enable the user to grasp
them better; these certainly never had handles, but it will not do
to draw any general conclusions froth that fact; and an examination
of the collection of M. d'Acy, the most complete we have of relics
of the Chelleen period, proves on the contrary that certain tools
could not have been used unless they had been fixed into handles.

In the following epoch, to which has been given the name of
Mousterien, from the Moustier Cave (Dordogne), we already meet with
more varied forms, including scrapers, saws, knife-blades, and spear-
or arrow-heads, with the special characteristic of being cut on one
side only. These implements are found not only in the alluvium as
are the Chelleen COUPS DE POING, but also in the cave or rock-shelter
deposits. Amongst the mammalian remains with which they are associated
are those of the mammoth, the RHINOCEROS TICHORHINUS, the elk, the
horse, the aurochs, the cave-lion, the cave-hyena, and the cave-bear,
remarkable for the constancy of their characteristics. The ELEPHAS
ANTIQUUS and the RHINOCEROS MERCKII that belonged to the preceding
period have now completely passed away, and the reindeer, now appearing
for the first time, are still far from numerous.

In the Solutreen period, so named after the celebrated Lake Station
of Solutre, we find stalked arrow-heads with lateral notches,[87]
flint-heads of the form of laurel leaves, which are remarkable for
their regularity of shape and delicacy of finish; as compared with
those of previous periods, the forms are much more delicate and
elegant. Many of the caves of the south of France belong to this
period. It is difficult to mention them all, and even more difficult
to make out a complete list of contemporary mammalia; the deposits
generally actually touch those of another period, and the separation
of the objects in them has not always been made with all the care that
could be wished. At Solutre, remains of the horse predominate; whilst
in other places those of the reindeer are met with in considerable
quantities, and with them are found the bones of the cave-bear, the
wild cat (a creature considerably larger than the tigers of the present
day), and of the mammoth, which lived on in Europe many centuries.

Lastly to the Madeleine period, so named after the Madeleine
Cave (Dordogne), and considered one of the most important of the
cave epochs, belong tools and weapons of all manner of shapes and
materials, including bone, born, and reindeer antlers; from this
time also date barbed arrows and harpoons, batons of office, telling
of social organization; the engravings and carvings on which bear
witness to the development of artistic feeling. On the other hand,
the flint arrow-heads and knife-blades are not so finely cut; we see
that man had learned to use other materials than stone. The reindeer
is the most characteristic animal form of the Madeleine period.

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