Books: Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples

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To the times we have just passed in review succeeded others of a
very different kind, to which has been given the general naive of
Neolithic. The fauna, probably lender the influence of climatic and
orographic changes, underwent a complete transformation; the mammoth,
the cave-bear, the megaceros, and the large felidae died out, the
hippopotamus was no longer seen, except in the heart of Africa;
the reindeer and other mammals that love to frequent the regions of
perpetual snow, retired to the extreme north; and in their place
appeared our earliest domestic animals, the ox, the sheep, the
goat, and the dog. Man, who witnessed these changes, continued to
progress; he abandoned his nomad for a sedentary life; he ceased to
be a bunter, and became an agriculturist and a shepherd. Everywhere
we meet with traces of new customs, new ideas, and a new mode of
life. This progress is especially seen in the industrial arts. Metals
it is true are still unknown, but side by side with tools, which are
merely chipped or roughly cut, we find for the first time hatchets,
celts, small knife-blades, and arrow-heads admirably polished by the
long-continued rubbing of one stone on another. Polishers, so much worn
as to bear witness to long service, are numerous in all collections,
and rocks and erratic blocks retain incisions which must have been
used for the same purpose.[88]

It is impossible to enumerate the number of polished hatchets which
have been found; their number is simply incalculable. Of all of them,
however, those of Scandinavia are the most remarkable for delicacy of
workmanship. With the fine hatchets of Brittany, may be compared the
blades found at Volgu, and preserved in the Museum of Copenhagen,
and those in pink, gray, and brown flint, from the Sordes Cave in
the south of France; but we cannot fix the date of the production of
any of them. One of the great difficulties of prehistoric research,
a difficulty not to be got over in the present state of our knowledge,
is to distinguish with any certainty the periods into which an attempt
has been made to divide the life-story of man from his first appearance
upon earth.

Was there any abrupt transition from one period to another? Must we
accept the theory of a long break caused by geological phenomena,
and the temporary depopulation which was one of the consequences of
these phenomena? Did the new era of civilization date from the arrival
of foreign races, stronger and better fitted than those they succeeded
for the struggle for existence? Or are these changes merely the result
of the natural progress which is one of the laws of our being? These
questions cannot now be solved, and if the industries which are at
the present moment the object of our researches, bear witness to
the employment of a new process, that of polishing, we are bound to
add that everywhere Paleolithic forms are still persistent. Flints,
merely chipped, are clumsy tools, but there is no break in their
series till we come to the splendid specimens from Scandinavia or
from Mexico. Of the seven types of the Solutreen period, six are met
with in the time now under consideration.[89] Five types of Solutreen
javelins have also been found in the Durfort Cave, and beneath the
dolmens of Aveyron and of Lozere. Neolithic weapons, such as those
found in the Moustier Cave, are not so numerous, but the type adopted
there is not such a fine one nor so carefully finished, which accounts
for its having been more rarely copied. If we examine the knives, awls,
scrapers, and saws, we come to the same conclusion, although comparison
is not so easy. "A knife is always a knife, an awl is always an awl,"
remarks M. Cartailhac; "they were made at every period, and their
resemblance to each other proves nothing with any certainty."

Rounded stones of granite or sandstone seem however to have been
weapons peculiar to the Neolithic period. Dr. Pommerol recently spoke
at the Anthropological Society of Paris, of two such rounded stones
picked up in the Puy-de-Dome. Similar stones have been discovered
at Viry-Noureuil, and M. Massenat has one in his collection from
Chez-Pourre. Are not these rounded stones of a similar character to
the BOLAS flung by the ancient Gauls, and still in use amongst the
inhabitants of the pampas of South America?

As we have already remarked, plan from the earliest times must often
have held in his hands the stones which served him as weapons or as
tools. The marks of hammering on the smooth surfaces, the rounded
projections and the grooves worked in these stones, were evidently
made to prevent the hand or the thumb from slipping. Soon, however,
reflection led man to understand the increase of force he would gain by
the addition to the stone of a handle of wood or horn, stag or reindeer
antler. This addition of a handle was simple enough: the workman
merely bound it to the hatchet with fibrous roots, leather thongs,
or ligaments taken from the gut of the animals slain in the chase
(Fig. 21). At first sight we are astonished at the results obtained
with such wretched materials, but it is impossible to dispute them,
for we have seen the same thing done in our own day.

FIGURE 21

1. Stone javelin-head with handle. 2. Stone hatchet with handle.

Other hatchets, chiefly those of a small size, were fixed into sheaths
made of stag-horn, and two chief types of them have actually been
made out.[90] The sheaths of the first type are short and end in
quadrangular beads. They are found most frequently in Switzerland,
in the basins of the Rhone and of the Saone, and throughout the south
of France. Those of the second type are pierced with a hole large
enough to pass the handle through. These are found in the northwest
of France, in Belgium, and in England.

Flint arrows of triangular or oval form, notched or stalked, were
everywhere used for a considerable length of time. They are found
in the numerous caves of France, beneath the ANTAS of Portugal, in
the tombs of Mykenae, as well as among the Ainos of Japan and the
Patagonians of South America. Their use necessarily involves that of
a bow, yet we do not know of a single weapon such as that, or of one
that could take its place, dating from Paleolithic times. Probably
the rapid decomposition of the wood of which bows were made has led
to their disappearance. De Mortillet[91] mentions a bow found in a
pile-dwelling in a bog near Robenhausen, which he ascribes to the
Neolithic period. Another is known which was found at Lutz, also
in Switzerland. To all appearance the most ancient bows of historic
times greatly resemble these two prehistoric examples.

Though flint was the material par excellence of Quaternary times for
weapons and tools, it could not long suffice for the ever-growing
needs of man. Our museums contain a complete series of bone or
stag-horn implements such as darts, arrow-heads, barbed arrows,
harpoons, fibulae, and finely cut needles often pierced with eyes
(Fig. 22). The invention of barbs is worthy of special notice; the
series of points made the blow much more dangerous, as the projectile
remained in the flesh of a wounded animal which was not able to
get it out. But this was not the only object of the barbs. Arranged
symmetrically on either side of the arrow they kept it afloat in the
air like the wings of a bird, which may perhaps have suggested their
use and increased the effect and precision of the shot.

FIGURE 22

1. Fine needles.
2. Coarse needles.
3. Amulet.
4 and 6. Ornaments.
5. Cut flint.
7. Fragment of a harpoon.
8. Fragments of a reindeer antler with signs or drawings.
9. Whistle.
10. One end of a bow (?).
11. Arrow-head. (From the Vache, Massat, and Lourdes caves.)

The Marsoulas Cave has yielded one bevelled arrow shaft, made
of reindeer antler, with a deep groove on the surface. A similar
arrow-head was found in the Pacard Cave, and in other places arrows
have been found with one or more grooves on the surface. Were these
grooves or drills intended to hold poison, and was man already
acquainted with this melancholy Diode of destruction? We know that
the use of poison was known at the most remote historic antiquity.[92]
The Greeks and Scythians used the venom of the viper, and other peoples
employed vegetable poisons. There is nothing to prevent our believing
that similar methods were in use in prehistoric times.

FIGURE 23

Amulet made of the penien bone of a bear, and found in the Marsoulas
Cave.

There is no doubt that it is the caves of the south of France which
have yielded the most interesting objects; needles with drilled eyes,
and barbed arrows have been picked up in considerable numbers at
Eyzies, Laugerie-Basse, at Bruniquel, Massat, and in the Madeleine
Cave. Dr. Garrigou mentions some rein deer or roebuck antlers found
in Ariege caves, which had been made into regular stilettos. In the
deposits at Lafaye were fouled stilettos or bodkins, varying in length
from two to six inches; needles measuring from nineteen to one hundred
and five millimetres and provided with eyes; at Marsoulas were found
an amulet made of the penien bone of a bear (Fig. 23), some pendants,
and some pointed pieces of bone which astonish us by the delicacy of
their workmanship, and the drawings with which they were adorned.

FIGURE 24

Various stone and bone objects from California.

At Paviland, Dr. Buckland discovered a wolf bone cut to a point. Kent's
Hole yielded a number of needles resembling those of the Madeleine
Cave; at Aggtelek (Hungary) were found some bones of the cave-bear
pointed to serve as daggers, cut into scrapers or pierced to serve as
amulets or ornaments. In Belgium, objects very similar to these have
been found made of reindeer antler and dating from the most remote
times. The antlers moulted by the reindeer in the spring were in
especial request.

Excavations in the sepulchral mounds near San Francisco (California)
have yielded thousands of bone implements (Fig. 24). Others similar
to them have been found in the layers of cinders at Madisonville
(Ohio) and beneath the numerous kitchen-middings of the coasts of
the Atlantic and Pacific.

The processes employed by the cave-men were very simple. In one of the
excavations superintended by him, M. Dupont[93] picked up the radius
of a horse bearing symmetrically made incisions executed with a view
to getting off splinters of the bone. These splinters were rounded by
rubbing either with chips of flint, or on such polishers as are to
be seen in any of the museums; then one end was sharpened, and the
other, if need were, pierced with a hole. It is astonishing to find
some of them as fine as the steel needles of the present day, and with
perfectly round eyes made with the help of nothing but a rough flint,
and there would still be some doubt on the subject, if M. Lartet[94]
had not obtained exactly similar results by working on fragments
of bone with the flints he had fouled in these excavations. Other
experiments of a similar kind were no less conclusive, for Merk[95]
perforated all ivory plaque with a pointed flint which he used as
a gimlet.

Some objects, which are supposed to date from Neolithic times, bear
witness to an altogether unexpected degree of civilization. In the
heart of Germany, in the peat-bogs of Laybach and Worbzig on the
banks of the Saale, have been found earthenware spoons of the shape
of modern spatulae; at Geraffin on Lake Bienne, a finely shaped
spoon made of the wood of a yew tree; and at Lagozza, another in
shining black earthenware. Lartet had already brought to light a
bone implement covered with ornaments in relief which he ascribed
to the Palaeolithic period, and which he imagined had been used for
extracting marrow; and another archaeologist tells of objects in
reindeer antler found in the Gourdan Cave, which he thinks were used
for a similar purpose. In the Saint-Germain Museum are preserved the
remains of spoons from the bed of the Seine, and in the collections
of England are fragments of bone taken from beneath the West-Kennet
dolmen, which were all probably employed for extracting marrow. But
the most important discovery of all, which leaves no doubt on the
subject, is that made by M. Perrault at the Chassey Camp, near
Chalon-sur-Saone, beneath a hearth dating from Neolithic times. He
collected fourteen earthenware spoons; one of them of a round shape
and remarkable for its size, was unfortunately broken (Fig. 25). It
is of brown earthenware with a rather rough surface mixed with bits
of flint, and is so much worn that it had evidently been in use a
long time. Lastly two spoons, also of earthenware, have recently been
found near Dondas (Lot-et-Garonne). The use of spoons, which certainly
marked considerable progress, must therefore have spread rapidly.

FIGURE 25

Dipper found in the excavations at the Chassey Camp.

Long previously, however, pottery of a great variety of form bore
witness to tire plastic skill of man. Every where we find vessels
of coarse material mixed with grains of sand or mica to give more
consistency to the paste which was baked in the fire, and had often no
further ornamentation than the marks of the fingers of the potter. Does
this pottery date from Palaeolithic times, or were the earthenware
vessels later additions at the time of those disturbances of deposits
which are the despair of archaeologists? A few examples may enable
us better to answer this question.

Fraas tells us that fragments of pottery have been found in all the
caves of Germany in which excavations have been made. He quotes that
of Hohlefels, where he himself picked up such fragments amongst
the bones of the mastodon, the mammoth, the rhinoceros, and the
cave-lion, when the remains of these animals were for the first time
found in Germany. In 1872, the making of the railway from Nuremberg
to Ratisbon brought to light a cave of considerable depth. In its
lower deposits were found nothing but the bones of hyenas, bears,
and lions, of which the cave had been the resort for centuries. Among
the most ancient deposits, relics of a similar kind were found in
abundance, but now mixed with numerous fragments of pottery, worked
flints, and fish bones, including those of the carp and the pike,
with the bones of mammals, amongst which predominated those of the
rhinoceros, most of them intentionally split open. At Argecilla,
twenty leagues from Madrid, Vilanova discovered a regular workshop,
in which were knives and flint arrow-heads, together with some very
primitive pottery made of clay that had evidently been brought from
a distance, as there is none in the district in which the pottery
was found, In an upper deposit Vilanova collected more than two
hundred implements made of diorite, a rock frequently used in Spain,
some very remarkable celts of serpentine dating from the Neolithic
period, and numerous fragments of very delicate pottery. Not far off
he discovered another workshop, containing some very fine hatchets
perfectly polished, and some keramic ware tastily ornamented. The
progress made is as marked in the weapons and tools as in the pottery.

We have also seen some fragments of earthenware from the caves of
Chiampo and Laglio, near Lake Como, and from that known as the Cave
dei Colombi, in tire island of Palmaria, which was occupied shortly
before the Neolithic period. But it is Belgium which yields the
most decisive proof on this subject, and a visit to the Brussels
Museum is enough to convince the most incredulous. The excavations
made under M. Dupont in the caves of the Meuse and the Lesse have
again and again brought to light fragments of pottery, associated
with the bones of Palaeolithic animals. Schmerling, too, had already
found similar fragments in the Engis Cave, mixed with flint weapons
of the rudest description; and his discoveries have been strikingly
confirmed by those recently made at Spy, near Namur,[96] and by
others made by M. Fraipont.[97] In portions of this same Engis Cave
not previously explored the learned professor of Liege found, in 1887,
fragments of a vase of ovoid form, some flints of the Mousterien type,
and some bones of extinct mammals. Most of the pottery in the Brussels
Museum is black and of primitive make; some few fragments, however,
are of finished workmanship. We may mention especially an ovoid vase,
remarkable for its size and for its lateral projections. This vase,
which is hand-modelled, came from the Frontal Cave; the clay is of
blackish hue mixed with little bits of calcareous spar. M. Ordinaire,
Vice-Consul for France at Callao, speaks of the CAYANES or MACAHUAS,
which are earthenware basins of great symmetry of form, made by the
Combos women, without turning wheels or mills of any kind. Though the
elegant shape of the Frontal and other vases at first surprises us,
reflection convinces us that men who could cut stones with such rare
skill would certainly be able to produce equally good pottery.

FIGURE 26

Pottery of a so far unclassified type found in the Argent Cave
(France).

Similar instances may easily be quoted from France. Excavations at
Solutre have yielded several fragments of yellow, hand-made pottery
very insufficiently baked; and other pieces have been found in the
peat-bogs of Bastide de Bearn with the bones of reindeer, and worked
flints similar to those found in Quaternary deposits. We may add
that at Lafaye, Bize, and Pondre (Hainault) discoveries were made of
pottery mixed with human remains and with those of animals now extinct;
and in the Argent Cave (Basses-Alpes) a new type, shown in Fig. 26,
has been found which merits special attention. In the very earliest
days of prehistoric research the Nabrigas Cave (Lozere) was excavated
by M. Joly, who found in it many fragments of pottery. In a volume
published shortly before his death he relates the circumstances of his
discovery, and earnestly maintains its authenticity. Later excavations,
made under the direction of masters in prehistoric science, would have
thrown some doubts on the assertions made by the professor of Toulouse,
if MM. Martel and Launay had not brought forward a fresh proof in
support of it. "On the 30th August, 1885,"[98] they say, "we picked
up at Nabrigas in a deep hole, untouched by previous excavations and
not displaced by water, some human bones and a piece of pottery side
by side with two skeletons of URSUS SPELAEUS. The human bones, of
indeterminate race, included an upper left maxillary, still retaining
three teeth, an incomplete mastoid apophysis, and seven pieces of
crania, belonging to different individuals. The piece of pottery only
measured one and a half by two and a quarter inches; the clay is gray
and friable, bound together with big bits of quartz, mica, and a few
particles of charcoal." There would appear to be no sufficient reason
to question the exactness of a discovery so carefully studied.

Many eminent archaeologists, however, maintain that pottery was
completely unknown in Paleolithic times, and they do not hesitate to
attribute to a later period any deposit in which it occurs where its
presence cannot be accounted for by later displacements. M. Cartailhac
declares that he has never been able to establish either in the south
of France or in the central table-land a single fact which justifies
us in asserting that the men of the Reindeer period, still less those
of earlier epochs, knew how to make pottery. The first explorers, he
adds, did not always distinguish with sufficient care the vestiges
of different epochs, the relics of diverse origins. How often have
bones carried along by water, or brought where they are found by
animals, been mixed with those abandoned by men, or the deposits of
the Neolithic period with those of the earliest Quaternary times! How
often have the contents of a passage giving access to a cave been
confounded with those of the cave itself! Hence deplorable errors,
which it is impossible to rectify now. Evans and Geikie in their
turn assert the absence in England[99] of Palaeolithic pottery,
and Sir J. Lubbock energetically maintains this opinion.

Doubtless these are great authorities, and yet, in view of the facts
now known, it is difficult to believe that man was long a stranger to
the art of making pottery. Its invention required no great effort of
intelligence, and its fabrication presented no great difficulties. Man
had but to knead the soft clay which he trod under his foot, and the
plasticity of which he could not fail to notice. This clay hardened
in the sun, and hollows were formed as it shrunk -- the first vessel
was discovered! Experience soon taught man to replace the heat of
the sun by that of the fire, and to add a few bits of some hard
substance to give the clay greater consistency. These first crude
and clumsy vases have been preserved to our own day as irrefutable
witnesses to the work of our ancestors. Though, therefore, we cannot
be sure that pottery was made in Quaternary times by all the races
that peopled Europe,[100] it is impossible to deny that a great many
of them were in possession of the art. This difference in the degree
of civilization attained to by men living but short distances from
each other need not surprise us, for all travellers report similar
facts amongst contemporary savage races.

The baking of pottery is a proof that the use of fire was known in
the most remote times. The existence in various places of masses
of cinders, fragments of charred wood, and half-calcined bones,
proves it yet more decidedly. At Solutre, at Louverne (Mayenne), at
Saint-Florent (Corsica), to give but a few examples, we find large
slabs of half-calcined stone, laid flat and covered with heaps of
cinders and all sorts of rubbish. These slabs formed the family hearth,
where man prepared his food, with the help of the fire he had learnt
to ignite and to keep burning.

How did man arrive at a discovery so vital to his existence? The Vedas
assign the origin of fire to the rubbing together in a storm of the dry
branches of trees. "The first men," says Vitruvius,[101] "were born,
as were other animals, in the forests, caves, and woods. The thick
trees violently agitated by the storm took fire, through the rubbing
together of their branches; the fury of the flames terrified the men
who found themselves near them and made them take to flight. Soon
reassured, however, they gradually approached again and realized all
the advantages they might gain for their bodies from the gentle warmth
of the fire. They added fuel to the flames, they kept the fire up,
they fetched other men whom they made understand by signs all the
usefulness of this discovery. The men thus assembled articulated a
few sounds, which, repeated every day, accidentally formed certain
words which served to designate objects, and soon they had a language
which enabled them to speak and to understand one another. It was,
then, the discovery of fire which led men to come together to form
a society, to live together, and to inhabit the same places."

Without pausing to consider the somewhat puerile theories of Vitruvius,
or the myths which testify to the importance attached to fire by
primeval man, we are at liberty to suppose that a conflagration caused
by lightning or by the spontaneous combustion of vegetable materials
in a state of fermentation, or other similar phenomena, made known to
man the power of fire, and the use it might be to him. The accidental
striking together of two flints produced a spark; observation taught
men to obtain a similar result by the same process; a great step in
advance was made, and the future of humanity was assured. M. Dupont
picked up in the Chaleux Cave a kidney-shaped piece of iron pyrites,
hollowed out in a peculiar manner, which had evidently been used to
obtain the precious spark. The Christy collection contains a granite
pebble with a hole the shape of a cup, which had evidently been used
to obtain fire, by rubbing round in it a stick of very dry wood. The
two methods employed at the present day were therefore already in
use. Lumholz tells us that the Australians of Herbert River get fire
by rubbing two pieces of wood together. The Indians of the northwest
of Colorado, the Yapais of the Caroline Islands, and the Mincopies of
the Andaman Isles, with many other races, know no other process. We
must, however, still maintain a certain reserve in dealing with the
fire-obtaining implements of so imperfect a nature, and belonging to
times so remote as those called prehistoric.

During bad seasons, or in the bitter cold of winter, primeval man
contented himself with flinging over his shoulders the skins of the
animals he had killed. He prepared these skins with flint scrapers,
and sewed them together with bone needles. In hot weather man probably
roamed about stark naked. Shame is not a natural instinct; education
alone develops it. Writing in 1617, Fynes Morison speaks of having
seen at Cork young girls quite naked, engaged in crushing corn with a
stone. The Tchoutchi women, says Nordenskiold, wear no clothes when in
their tents, however great the cold. In tropical countries men, women,
and children, all completely nude, went to meet the travellers who
landed on their shores. Count Ursel, in a recent journey in Bolivia,
in going through a little town, saw "near the public fountain some
young girls already growing up making their ablutions and playing about
in the garb of the earthly paradise." Travellers who visited Japan
a few years ago reported that the inhabitants, without distinction
of age or sex, came out of the water in a state of complete nudity,
presenting a strange spectacle to European eyes. The sight of what is
actually going on amongst comparatively civilized people in our own
day enables us to understand better what must have been the state of
things when the whole world was in a state of barbarism.

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