Olmo, near Chiana, in Tuscany; a skull from Egisheim, in Alsace;
a lower jaw from the Naulette cave near Furfooz, in Belgium; and
a fragment of jaw from the Schipka cave in Moravia. This material
is not sufficient for determining race, but all human remains of
reliable age from the drift of Europe, and all the skulls found in
caves, agree in size, form, and capacity with _Homo sapiens_, and
are well formed throughout. In no way do they fill the gap between
man and ape.
[Illustration: PRIMITIVE PEOPLE OF TO-DAY
Until they came in touch with European travellers the Esquimaux
were in precisely the same condition as Drift Man: they were living
in the Ice Age. They are but little more advanced now, and the
difference between them and prehistoric men is slight. This is a
group of young Esquimau women.
]
“On the other hand,” writes Dr. Chalmers Mitchell, “a large majority
of modern anatomists and palæontologists accept the antiquity of such
skulls as the Neanderthal specimen, and agree that these point to the
existence of a human race inferior to any now existing. This race
comprised powerfully-built individuals, with low foreheads, prominent,
bony ridges above the eyes, and retreating chins. The radius and ulna
were unusually divergent, so that the forearms must have been heavy and
clumsy. The thigh-bones were bent and the shin-bones short, so that the
race must have been bow-legged and clumsy in gait.”
[Sidenote: A Type Between Man and Ape?]
“The intermediate position of these primitive types has received
extraordinary confirmation by the discovery of what may truly be called
the link, no longer missing, between man and the apes. In 1894, Dr.
Eugene Dubois discovered in the Island of Java in a bed of volcanic
ashes containing the remains of Pliocene animals the roof of a small
skull, two grinding-teeth, and a diseased femur. These remains indicate
an animal which, when erect, stood not less than 5 ft. 6 in. high.
The teeth and thigh-bones were very human, and the skull, although
very human, had prominent eyebrow ridges like those of the Neanderthal
type, and a capacity of about 1,000 cubic centimetres--that is to
say, much greater than that of the largest living apes, and falling
short by about 100 cubic centimetres of the largest skull capacities
of existing normal human beings. This creature, regarded at first by
some anatomists as a degenerate man, by others as a high ape, has now
been definitely accepted as a new type of being, intermediate between
man and the apes and designated as _Pithecanthropus erectus_.” There
is no doubt that Asia, Europe, North Africa, and North America, so
far as their ice-covering allowed of their being inhabited, form one
continuous region for the distribution of Palæolithic Man, in which
all discoveries give similar results. In this vast region the lowest
and oldest prehistoric stratum that serves as the basis of historical
civilisation is the homogeneous Palæolithic stratum. In the Drift
Period, Palæolithic Man penetrated into South America, as into a new
region, with northern Drift animals. In Central and South Africa and
Australia, Palæolithic Man does not yet seem to be known. All the more
important is it that in Tasmania Palæolithic conditions of civilisation
existed until the middle of the last century.
[Illustration: THE HOMES OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLE OF THE PRESENT DAY
There are people still living in dwelling-places of prehistoric
type. This photograph of Esquimau stone and turf huts, in
Greenland, shows exactly the kind of dwellings used by prehistoric
men in the Ice Age.
]
[Illustration: THE GRADUAL EXTINCTION OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLES
The Yukaghirs, natives of Siberia, a division of the Mongolic
family, were formerly a wide-spread race, and, according to their
national tradition, were so numerous that “the birds flying over
their camp fires became blackened with smoke.” The Jesup Expedition
found them reduced to 700 in number. Hunger had forced some of
them to cannibalism and suicide. They are a primitive people, but
considerably superior to the Esquimaux.
]
[Illustration: A CREATURE BETWEEN APE AND MAN
The skull of the Fossil Ape-man found in 1894, in the island of
Java; restored by Dr. Eugene Dubois.
]
[Sidenote: Backward Races of Europe]
The palæontology of man has hitherto obtained good geological
information of the oldest Palæolithic culture-stratum of the Drift in
only a few parts of the earth, and only in Tasmania does this oldest
stratum appear to have cropped out free, and still uncovered by other
culture strata, down to our own times. Otherwise it is everywhere
overlaid by a second, later culture-stratum of much greater thickness,
which, although opened up in almost innumerable places, is not spread
over the whole earth as is the Palæolithic stratum. As opposed to
the earliest Stone Age of the Drift, which we have come to know as
the Palæolithic Period, this has been called the Later Stone Age or
Neolithic Period.
The Neolithic Period is also ignorant of the working of metals; for
weapons and implements, stone is the exclusive hard material of which
the blades are made. But geologically and palæontologically the two
culture-strata are widely and sharply separated.
As regards Europe, and a large part of the other continents, the second
stratum of the culture of the human race still lies at prehistoric
depth. But in other extensive parts of the earth the stratum of
Neolithic culture was not covered by other culture-strata until far
into the period of written history. Even a large part of Europe was
still inhabited by history-less tribes of the later Stone Age at the
time when the old civilised lands of Asia and of Africa, and the
coasts of the Mediterranean, had everywhere--on the basis of the
same Neolithic elements, with the increasing use of metals--already
risen to that higher stage of civilisation which, with the historical
written records of Egypt and Babylonia, forms the basis of our present
chronology.
When these civilised nations came into direct contact with the more
remote nations of the Old World, they found them, as we have said,
still, to a certain extent, at the Neolithic stage of civilisation,
just as, when Europeans settled in America, the great majority of the
aborigines had not yet passed the Neolithic stage, at which, indeed,
the lowest primitive tribes of Central Brazil still remain. Australia,
and a large part of the island world of the South Sea, had not yet
risen above the Neolithic stage (Tasmania, probably, not even above
the Palæolithic) when they were discovered. There the Stone Age, to a
certain extent, comes down to modern times; likewise in the far north
of Asia, in Greenland, in the most northern parts of America, and at
the south point of the New Continent among the Fuegians.
The men of the later Stone Age are the ancestors of the civilised men
of to-day. Classical antiquity among Greeks and Romans had still a
consciousness of this, at least partly; it was not entirely forgotten
that the oldest weapons of men did not consist of metal, but of stone,
and even inferior material. The worked stones which the people then,
as now, designated as weapons of the deity, as lightning-stones or
thunderbolts, were recognised by keener-sighted men as weapons of
primeval inhabitants of the land.
[Sidenote: What the Kitchen Middens Tell Us]
The “kitchen middens” on the Danish coasts mark places of more or less
permanent settlement, consisting of more or less numerous individual
dwellings. From these middens a rich inventory of finds has been made,
affording a glimpse of the life and doings of those ancient times.
The heaps consist principally of thousands upon thousands of opened
shells of oysters, cockles, and other shellfish still eaten at the
present day, mingled with the bones of the roe, stag, aurochs, wild
boar, beaver, seal, etc. Bones of fishes and birds were also made
out, among the latter being the bones of the wild swan and of the now
extinct great auk, and, what is specially important in determining
the geological age of these remains, large numbers of the bones of
the capercailzie. Domestic animals are absent with the exception of
the dog, whose bones, however, are broken, burnt, gnawed in the same
way as those of the beasts of the chase. Everything proves that on
the sites of these middens there formerly lived a race of fishers and
hunters, whose chief food consisted of shellfish, the shells of which
accumulated in mounds around their dwellings. Proofs of agriculture and
cattle-rearing there are none; the dog alone was frequently bred not
only as a companion in the chase, but also for its flesh.
The state of civilisation of the old Danish shellfish-eaters was not
quite a low one in spite of its primitive colouring, and in essential
points was superior to that of Palæolithic Man. Not only had they tamed
a really domestic animal, the dog, but they made and used clay vessels
for cooking and storing purposes. The cooking was done on fireplaces.
They could work deer-horn and bone well. Of the former hammer-axes
with round holes were made, and of animal bones arrow-heads, awls, and
needles, with the points carefully smoothed. Small bone combs appeared
to have served not so much for toilet purposes as for dividing animal
sinews for making threads, or for dressing the threads in weaving.
[Illustration: EUROPE IN THE ICE AGE
The map illustrates the extent of the Ice Age in Europe. It will
be noticed that in England the ice-cap did not extend south of the
position of London though it occurred much further south in the
mountain regions of the Pyrenees, the Alps, Tyrol, the Carpathians
and the Caucasus. The dark portions of the map represent the extent
of the ice.
]
[Sidenote: Drift Man and His Adversaries]
In the way of ornaments there were perforated animal teeth. The fish
remains found in the middens belong to the plaice, cod, herring, and
eel. To catch these deep-sea fish the fishermen must have gone out
to sea, which implies the possession of boats of some kind. Nor was
only small game hunted, but also large game. Ninety per cent. of the
animal bones occurring in the shell-mounds consist of those of large
animals, especially the deer, roe, and wild boar. Even such dangerous
adversaries as the aurochs, bear, wolf, and lynx were killed, likewise
the beaver, wildcat, seal, otter, marten, and fox. The very numerous
fragments of clay vessels belong partly to large pot-like vessels
without handles and with pointed or flat bottoms, and partly to small
oval bowls with round bottoms. All vessels were made with the free
hand of coarse clay, into which small fragments of granitic stone were
kneaded; as ornament they have in a few cases incisions or impressions,
mostly made with the finger itself on the upper edge.
The great importance of the Danish middens in the general history of
mankind is due to the fact that their age is geologically established,
so that they can serve as a starting-point for chronology. It is
to Japetus Steenstrup that the early history of our race owes this
chronological fixing of an initial date.
[Sidenote: The First Elements of Civilisation]
The earliest inhabitants of the North of Europe during the Stone
Age, as recorded by these kitchen-middens of the Danish period, were
scarcely superior to Palæolithic Man in civilisation, judging from
outward appearances. But a closer investigation taught us that,
in spite of the poverty of their remains, a higher development of
civilisation is unmistakable. And this superiority of the Neolithic
over the Palæolithic Epoch becomes far more evident if we take as our
standard of comparison, not the poor fisher population, who probably
first reached the Danish shores as pioneers, but the Neolithic
civilisation that had been fully developed in sunnier lands and
followed closely upon these trappers or squatters. Next to hunting
and fishing, cattle-breeding and agriculture are noticeable as the
first elements of Neolithic civilisation, and in connection with
them the preparation of flour and cooking; and as technical arts,
chiefly carving and the fine working of stone, of which weapons and
the most various kinds of tools were made; with the latter wood,
bone, deer-horn, etc., could be worked. The blades are no longer
sharpened merely by chipping, but by grinding, and are made in various
technically perfect forms. Special importance was attached to providing
them with suitable handles, for fixing which the stone implement or
weapon was either provided with a hole, or, as in America especially,
with notches or grooves.
[Sidenote: The Mental Life of Ancient Days]
In addition to these, there are the primitive arts of man--the ceramic
art, spinning, and weaving. In the former, especially, an appreciation
of artistic form and decoration by ornament is developed. The ornament
becomes a kind of symbolical written language, the eventual deciphering
of which appears possible in view of the latest discoveries concerning
the ornamental symbolism of the primitive races of the present day.
Discoveries of dwellings prove an advanced knowledge of primitive
architecture; entrenchments and tumuli acquaint us with the principles
of their earthworks; and the giant chambers, built of colossal blocks
of stone piled upon one another, prove that the builders of those
times were not far behind the much-admired Egyptian builders in
transporting and piling masses of stone. The burials, whose ceremonies
are revealed by opened graves, afford a glimpse of the mental life
of that period. From the skulls and skeletons that have been taken
from the Neolithic graves, science has been able to reconstruct the
physical frame of Neolithic Man, which has in no way to fear comparison
with that of modern man. Of the ornaments of the Stone Age the most
important and characteristic are perforated teeth of dogs, wolves,
horses, oxen, bears, boars, and smaller beasts of prey. How much in
favour such ornaments were is proved by the fact that even imitations
or counterfeits of them were worn. Numerous articles of ornament,
carved from bone and deer-horn, were universal: ornamental plates and
spherical, basket-shaped, square, shuttle-like, or chisel-shaped beads
were made of these materials and formed into chains.
[Illustration: THE ICE AGE IN THE PRESENT DAY: AN ESQUIMAU WATCHING A
SEAL HOLE]
In the Swiss lake-dwellings of the Stone Age have been found skilfully
carved ear-drops, needles with eyes, neat little combs of boxwood, and
hairpins, some with heads and others with pierced side protuberances.
Remains of textile fabrics, even finely twilled tissue, and also
leather, were yielded by the excavations of the lake-dwellings of
that period, so that we have to imagine the inhabitants adorned with
clothes of various kinds.
[Sidenote: Man’s First and Oldest Animal Friend]
What raises man of the later Stone Age so far above Palæolithic Man is
the possession of domestic animals and the knowledge of agriculture.
As domestic animals of the later Stone Age we have proof of the dog,
cow, horse, sheep, goat, and pig. Among the animals that have attached
themselves to man as domestic, the first and oldest is undoubtedly the
dog. It is found distributed over the whole earth, being absent from
only a few small islands. Among many races the dog was, and is still,
the only domestic animal in the proper sense of the word. This applies
to all Esquimau tribes, to the majority of the Indians of North and
South America, and to the continent of Australia.
We have no certain proofs that Palæolithic Man possessed the dog as a
domestic animal. In the Somme valley, at Taubach, and at the source
of the Schussen, bones of the domestic dog are absent. And yet, among
Drift fauna in caves remains of dogs have been repeatedly met with,
which have been claimed to be the direct ancestors of the domestic dog.
The dog’s attachment to man may have taken place at different times
in different parts. Man and dog immigrate to South America with the
foreign Northern fauna simultaneously--in a geological sense--during
the Drift. In Australia, man and dog (dingo), as the most intimate
animal beings, are opposed to an animal world that is otherwise
anomalous and, to the Old World, quite antiquated; probably man and dog
also came to Australia together. We know of fossil remains of the dingo
from the Drift, but no reliable finds have yet proved the presence of
man during that period.
[Sidenote: The Dog in the Stone Age]
In the later Stone Age the dog already occurs as the companion of
man wherever it occurs in historic times. In Europe its remains have
been found in the Danish kitchen-middens, in the northern Neolithic
finds, in the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, in innumerable caves of
the Neolithic Period, in the terramare of Upper Italy, etc. It was
partly a comparatively small breed, according to Rütimeyer similar to
the “wachtelhund” (setter) in size and build. Rütimeyer calls this
breed the lake-dwelling dog, after the lake-dwellings, one of the
chief places where it has been found. Like all breeds of animals of
primitive domestication, the dog at this period, according to Nehring,
is small--stunted, as it were. With the progress of civilisation the
dog also grows larger.
[Sidenote: Great Value of the Dog to Man]
In the later prehistoric epochs, beginning with the so-called “Bronze”
Period, we find throughout almost the whole of Europe a rather
larger and more powerful breed with a more pointed snout--the Bronze
dog--whose nearest relative seems to be the sheep-dog. At the present
day the domestic dog is mostly employed for guarding settlements and
herds and for hunting. In the Arctic regions the Esquimaux also use
their dogs, which are like the sheep-dog, for personal protection and
hunting; they do particularly good service against the musk-ox, while
the wild reindeer is too fast for them. But the Esquimau dog is chiefly
used for drawing the sledge, and, where the sledge cannot be used,
as a beast of burden, since it is able to carry fairly heavy loads.
In China and elsewhere, as formerly in the old civilised countries
of South America, the dog is still fattened and killed for meat. So
that the domestic dog serves every possible purpose to which domestic
animals can be put, except, it seems, for milking, although this would
not be out of the question either. The dog was also eaten by man in
the later Stone Age, as is proved by the finds in his kitchen refuse.
The reindeer is now restricted to the Polar regions of the Northern
Hemisphere--Scandinavia, North Asia, and North America, whereas in the
Palæolithic Period it was very numerous throughout Russia, Siberia,
and temperate Europe down to the Alps and Pyrenees. It does not seem
ever to have been definitely proved that the reindeer existed in the
Neolithic Period of Central and Northern Europe, although according to
Von Zittel it lived in Scotland down to the eleventh century and in
the Hercynian forest until the time of Cæsar. The earliest definite
information we appear to have of the tamed reindeer, which at the
present day is a herd animal with the Lapps in Europe, and with the
Samoyedes and Reindeer Tunguses in Asia, is found in Ælian, who speaks
of the Scythians having tame deer.
Oxen at present exist nowhere in the wild state, while the tame ox
is distributed as a domestic animal over the whole earth, and has
formed the most various breeds. In the European Drift a wild ox, the
urus, distinguished by its size and the size of its horns, was widely
distributed, and it still lived during the later Stone Age with the
domestic ox. In the later prehistoric ages, and even in historic times,
the urus still occurs as a beast of the forest.
[Sidenote: The Taming of the Wild Horse]
In the later Stone Age the horse, too, is no longer merely a beast of
the chase, but occurs also in the tame state. During the Drift the
horse lived in herds all over Europe, North Asia, and North Africa.
From this Drift horse comes the domestic horse now found all over the
earth. Even the wild horses of the Drift exhibit such considerable
differences from one another that, according to Nehring’s studies,
these are to be regarded as the beginning of the formation of local
breeds. The taming and domestication of the wild horse of the Drift,
which began in the Stone Age, led to the domestic horse being split up
later into numerous breeds. The old wild horse was comparatively small,
with a large head; a similar form is still found here and there on the
extensive barren moors of South Germany in the moss-horse, or, as the
common people call it, the moss-cat. At the present day the genus of
the domestic horse falls, like the ox, into two chief breeds--a smaller
and more graceful Oriental breed, and a more powerful and somewhat
larger Western breed with the facial bones more strongly developed.
The horse of the later Stone Age of Europe exhibits only comparatively
slight differences from the wild horse; it is generally a small,
half-pony-like form with a large head, evidently also a stunted product
of primitive breeding under comparatively unfavourable conditions.
Two species extant in the Stone Age still live wild on the steppes of
Central Asia at the present day; one of them also occurs as a fossil in
the European Drift, although only rarely. That the ass occurred in the
European Drift is probable, but not proved. It has not yet been found
in the Neolithic Period of Europe.
[Sidenote: Did the Horse come from Asia?]
A survey of the palæontology of the domestic animals shows that they
come from wild Drift species which--at any rate, as regards the ox,
horse, and dog--are now extinct, so that these most important domestic
animals now exist only in the tame state. Some of the domestic animals
came from Asia, and, according to Von Zittel, were imported into Europe
from there; this applies to the peat-ox and the domestic goat and pig.
The Asiatic origin of the domestic horse and sheep is probable, but not
proved; the sheep is found wild in South Europe as well as in Asia.
The tarpan, a breed of horse very similar to the wild horse, lives in
herds independent of man on the steppes of Central Asia. This has been
indicated as being probably the parent breed of the domestic horse, and
the origin of the latter has accordingly also been traced to Asia.
One thing is certain: a considerable number of animal forms that
co-exist with man in Europe at the present day--for instance, almost
all the forms of our poultry and the fine kinds of pigs and sheep--have
originally come from Asia. Our investigations show a similar state of
things even in the Neolithic Period.
In the North of Europe, which has furnished us with our standard
information regarding the Neolithic culture-stratum, the certain proofs
that have hitherto been found of agriculture and the cultivation of
useful plants having been practised at that time (to which civilisation
owes no less than to the breeding of useful tame animals) consist not
so much of plant remains themselves as of stone hand-mills and spinning
and weaving implements, which indicate the cultivation of corn and flax.
[Sidenote: History in the Lake Dwellings]
Our chief knowledge of Neolithic agriculture and plant culture has been
furnished by the lake-dwellings, especially those of Switzerland, which
have preserved the picture of the Neolithic civilisation of Central
Europe, sketched for us, as it were, in the North, in its finest lines.
So far we can prove the cultivation of the following useful plants
in the later Stone Age; their remains were chiefly found, as we have
said, well preserved in the Stone Age lake-dwellings of Switzerland,
which have been described in classical manner by Oswald Heer. Of
cereal grasses Heer determined, in the rich Stone Age lake-dwellings
of Wangen, on Lake Constance, and Robenhausen, in Lake Pfäffikon,
three sorts of wheat and two varieties of barley--the six-rowed and
two-rowed. Flax was also grown by Neolithic Man. This was, it seems, a
rather different variety from our present flax, being narrow-leaved,
and still occurs wild, or probably merely uncultivated, in Macedonia
and Thracia. Flax has also been found growing wild in Northern India,
on the Altai Mountains, and at the foot of the Caucasus.
[Illustration: THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE HORSE