of the New World also exhibit a Neolithic stage, corresponding to
that of Europe, as the basis of the further development of the ancient
civilised lands of America. And where a higher civilisation did not
develop autochthonously in America, European discoverers found the
Neolithic civilisation still in active existence, as they did in the
whole Australian world. Accordingly in these vast regions, which
have never risen above the Stone Age of themselves, the same stage
of civilisation which in the old civilised lands belongs to a grey,
immemorial, prehistoric period, here stands in the broad light of
historic times. The study of modern tribes in an age of stone throws
many a ray of light on the conditions of the prehistoric Stone Age; and
this study, on the other hand, shows us that the primitive conditions
of civilisation of those tribes stand for a general stage of transition
in the development of all mankind.
[Sidenote: The Foundations of Society]
The lake-dwelling stations, and the land settlements resembling them,
prove of themselves how far the culture of the early inhabitants of
Europe was advanced even in that ancient period which was formerly
imagined to be scarcely raised above half-animal conditions. Such
structures could not be erected unless men combined into large social
communities, which is indeed indicated by the very fact of the number
of dwellings that were crowded into a comparatively small space. For
the first ramming-in of the pile-works a large number of men working
together on a common plan was absolutely necessary. The same applies
to the construction of the artificial islands, protected by pile-works
and partly resting on piles, termed “crannoges” by Irish archæologists,
and to the Italian villages called “terramare,” which likewise once
rested on piles and were protected by ditches. From the extent of
the pile-works we are able to estimate the number of the former
inhabitants of the settlements supported by them. Quite as clear an
idea of the number of the former inhabitants is also given by the early
circumvallations on the tops of hills and shoulders of rock, which were
likewise made and inhabited during the Stone Age.
The co-operation of a large number of men for a common purpose is
also shown in the often huge stone structures to which, on account
of the size of the stones employed in their construction, the name
“megalithic” structures, or gigantic stone structures, has been
given. In Northern Europe they, too, belong to the Stone Age proper.
The majority of these gigantic structures were originally tombs; the
principle on which they are built is often repeated even in far less
imposing tombs.
[Illustration: THE FAMOUS GIANT CHAMBER NEAR ROSKILDE IN DENMARK
That the men of the later Stone Age had developed a considerable
degree of culture is proved by such remains as these. The erection
of these giant chambers must have called for a vast amount of
co-operation, skill, and ingenuity. The means whereby the massive
stones were placed into position, and so fixed to withstand the
shocks of thousands of years, have not yet been satisfactorily
explained by archæology.
]
The stone blocks of which these gigantic structures are piled now
often lie bare. Large stones placed crosswise, which represent, as
it were, the side-walls of a room, support a roof of one or several
“covering-stones” of occasionally colossal size. For the erection of
these in their present position without the technical resources at the
disposal of modern builders, human strength appears inadequate; in
popular opinion only giants could have made such structures. Some of
the stones are really so large, and the covering-stones especially so
enormous, that these buildings have defied destruction, for thousands
of years, by their very weight.
In the time of their construction these giants’ graves were mostly
buried under mounds. They were the inner structures of large tumuli,
in which the reverence of the men of the Stone Age once buried its
heroes. One of the finest “giant’s chambers” is probably that near Öm,
in the neighbourhood of Roskilde, in Denmark. The building material
consists merely of erratic stone blocks of enormous size. The rough
blocks were mostly set up by the side of one another, without any
further working, so as to support one another as far as possible; at
the same time all of them, as Sophus Müller observes, are slightly
inclined inward, so that they are kept more firmly in position by their
own weight. The stones thus erected, forming the parallel side-walls
of the whole structure, stand so far apart that a huge erratic block,
reaching from one wall to the other, could be placed on them as a roof.
The distance between the side-walls of the giant’s chambers attains
a maximum of eight to nine feet; the covering-stones placed on them
are some ten to eleven feet long. The pressure of the covering-stones
from above helps considerably to hold the whole structure together.
In order to distribute the pressure of the covering-stones regularly,
smaller stones were carefully inserted under the wall-stones where they
had to stand on the ground. How exactly these proportions of weight
were judged is proved by the fact that these structures of heavy and
irregular stones, resting on their natural, differently shaped sides
and edges, have held together until the present day. The inner walls
of the chambers were made as carefully as possible. Where, as on the
outside, the rough and irregular form of the stone block projects,
either the naturally smooth side was turned inward or the roughness was
chipped off.
[Illustration: THE MARVELLOUS MEMORIALS OF THE STONE AGE AT CARNAC IN
BRITTANY
On the plain near the little town of Carnac, in Brittany, stand
eleven thousand immense monoliths in eleven rows, erected probably
for religious purposes in the Stone Age.
]
These are the beginnings of a real architecture, seen also in the
regular wedging with small stones of the spaces left between the
wall-stones and covering-stones and between the wall-stones themselves.
These small stones were frequently built in, in regular wall-like
layers. Sandstone was often used for the purpose, being more easily
split into regular pieces, which gave this masonry a still more
pleasing appearance. The number of stone blocks used for the wall-sides
varies according to the size of the giant’s chambers, as does also
the number of covering-stones. For smaller chambers, with six to nine
wall-stones, two or three covering-stones were required. But far larger
stone chambers occur, as many as seventeen wall-stones having been
counted. Such large chambers require a whole row of covering-stones
beside one another. The door-opening often shows a special regard for
architectonics. The two door-post stones are rather lower than the
other wall-stones; on them a stone was laid horizontally, which kept
them apart and distributed the pressure of the covering-stone equally
on both posts.
Very often there was also a stone as a threshold. Leading to the door
is a low passage, made in similar manner to the chamber, but of far
smaller stones. The passage is only high enough to allow one to creep
through, whereas the chamber itself is about as high as a man, so that
one could stand upright in most of them. Larger stone chambers are
rarely without this passage, and from it such grave-structures have
been named “passage-graves.” Besides the building-in of small stones,
the holes still remaining between the stones were also coated over on
the outside with mud to keep the rain-water from soaking in; mud was
also frequently used for making a rough plaster floor for the chamber
if the natural floor could not be made level enough. On the floor is
frequently found a compact layer of small flints, or a regular pavement
of flat stones, often rough-hewn, or roundish stones fitting one
another as nearly as possible, which were then probably also covered
with a thick layer of mud.
[Illustration: “THE MERCHANTS’ TABLE”: AN IMMENSE DOLMEN ERECTED IN THE
STONE AGE
Archæologists are not entirely agreed as to the purpose of these
dolmens. They were more likely graves, or chambers associated with
religious rites, than residences. This example is at Locmariaquer,
near Carnac, in Brittany.
]
So that in these giant’s chambers we have real buildings, which imply
high technical accomplishments and have preserved for us the usual
form of the dwellings of those early times. In what manner the huge
covering-stones were placed on the side-walls of the giant’s chambers
is a problem still unsolved. Doubtless many hands were occupied on
such structures; and the history of building teaches us that with the
proper use of human strength--as, for instance, in ancient Egypt--great
weights can be raised and placed in position with very simple
tools--round pieces of wood as rollers, ropes, and handspikes.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE “MERCHANTS’ TABLE”
This is the interior of the above dolmen. It will be seen that the
earth has slowly risen a great height since it was erected, nearly
covering the dolmen, thus indicating immense age. The principal
supporting stone is covered with sculpture.]
Some of these giant’s chambers, which were originally enclosed in
mounds or barrows, are still preserved at the present day, and
splendidly too. Very often the chamber was quite covered with earth
outside; it then formed the centre of what was generally a circular
barrow, often regular small hills ten to fifteen feet high and
frequently over ninety feet in circumference.
[Illustration: A PALACE UNDER A CLIFF: A REMARKABLE MONUMENT OF THE
STONE AGE IN CLIFF PALACE CAÑON, COLORADO
This is perhaps the most noteworthy of all the remains of the cliff
dwellers, and indicates how considerable was the culture of those
early people in America.
]
The corpses were buried, not cremated. They were frequently in a
crouching attitude, or that of a sleeper lying sideways with the
legs drawn up to the body. The smaller graves often represent single
interments; the larger or largest ones are mostly family tombs, in
which numerous corpses were interred one after the other at different
times. But this repeated use of the graves is found also with smaller
ones, and even with stone cists. Only the last corpse then lies in a
normal position, while, through the repeated opening of the grave and
the later interments, the skeletons belonging to previously interred
corpses appear more or less disturbed or intentionally put aside.
The skulls of the corpses interred in the Neolithic graves are well
formed, their size indicating a very considerable brain development.
The corpses were no bigger than the present inhabitants of the same
districts, and the form of the head corresponds partly with that of the
present population of those countries. Nor do the skeletons otherwise
differ from those of modern men.
In America, also, gigantic structures were erected by the aborigines
who lived in the Stone Age, to commemorate and to protect their dead.
They consist partly of large mounds of stones and earth, which are
likewise often regular small hills, and partly of stone structures
reminding one of the giants’ chambers. The majority of the mounds were
doubtless mainly sepulchral; others may have been temple-hills or
sacrificial mounds, defensive works or observatories.
The objects buried with the occupants belong mostly to the Neolithic
Period, and consist chiefly of stone weapons and tools, some rude, but
others finely worked and polished. Some are of pure natural copper,
which was beaten into shape cold with stone hammers. Besides these,
and ornaments and pottery, an American specialty is found in the form
of tobacco-pipes carved from stone, some of which give interesting
representations of men and animals; this seems to prove that tobacco
also played a part in the American funeral rites of those times.
The graves of the Neolithic Period not only indicate that mankind
generally was endowed with the same gifts as regards the first
principles of the art of building, but they also afford us a glimpse
of the mental life of that period of civilisation which at a more
or less distant period was spread over the whole earth. What is so
characteristic is the affectionate care for the corpse, for whose
protection no amount of labour and trouble appeared too great. We
can have no doubt that this reverence was based on a belief in the
immortality of the soul--a belief which we find also at the present day
among the most backward and abandoned “savages.” That the prehistoric
men of the Stone Age held this belief is proved by the ornaments,
weapons, implements, and food placed with the dead for use in the next
world. Their burial customs certainly express a kind of worship of
departed souls which has played and still plays so important a part in
the religious ideas of all primitive peoples, and is one of the oldest
fundamental notions common to mankind.
[Illustration:
G. Nordenskiöld
HOW STONE AGE MAN WAS BURIED
Photograph of an actual skeleton, in position of burial, taken from
a prehistoric mound grave in North America.
]
[Illustration: THE STRANGE RELIGION OF THE STONE AGE: A DRUID CEREMONY
AT STONEHENGE
A vivid illustration, from an old print, of the purposes of the
mysterious stone circles common in Celtic countries
]
[Illustration: THE WORLD BEFORE HISTORY--VI
Professor JOHANNES RANKE]
WHEN HISTORY WAS DAWNING
The discovery of Drift Man, his distinction from man of the later
Stone Age, the investigation of the Palæolithic and Neolithic strata
of culture of Europe and of the whole earth, and the scientific
reconstruction of the earliest forms of civilisation based on these,
are due solely to the natural-science method of research.
It was only when the exact methods of palæontology and geology had been
brought to bear with all their rigour on the study of ancient man by
savants schooled in natural science that solid results were obtained.
On this sure foundation the science of history now continues building,
and uses, even for the later periods, so far as recorded information is
not available, and to supplement it, the same methods of palæontology
and natural science which were applied so successfully to the earliest
stages of the evolution of mankind.
[Sidenote: Time-Table of Prehistoric Periods]
The first point is to collect the relics of the periods of the
evolution of culture which follow on the later Stone Age, and to
separate them according to geological strata, uninfluenced by those
older pseudo-historic fancies by which the deepening of our historical
knowledge has so long been hindered. By carefully separating and
tracing the earth’s strata till we come to those that furnish remains
of times recorded in history, it has been possible to establish first
a relative chronology of the so-called later prehistoric periods of
Central Europe, whose offshoots pass immediately into recorded history.
By digging, after the same method of palæontological science,
through stratum after stratum in the oldest centres of culture,
especially in the Mediterranean countries, and by arranging the
products by strata--uninfluenced by historical hypotheses--after
the same natural-science method of research which has produced such
remarkable results in Central Europe, the most surprising conformity
in the evolution of culture in widely remote regions has been shown.
It was found that in the Mediterranean countries, and also in Egypt
and Babylonia, forms of culture already belong to the time of real
history which were first recognised in Central Europe as preliminary
prehistoric stages of historical strata; so that it was possible also
to establish an absolute historical chronology for those instead of the
relative prehistoric one.
[Sidenote: Europe’s Prehistoric Night]
Thus times which, as regards Central Europe, were hitherto wrapped in
prehistoric night are enlightened by history. Although, as regards
Central and Northern Europe, we cannot name the peoples who were the
bearers of those forms of culture, and although we disdain to give them
a premature nomenclature of hypothetical names, yet their conditions of
life and culture and the progressive development of these, in manifold
contact and intercourse with neighbouring and even far remote historic
peoples and periods, have risen from the darkness of thousands of
years; and their relation in time to the latter has been recognised.
Thus prehistoric times have themselves become history. The historical
account of every single region has henceforth to begin with the
description of the oldest antiquities of the soil that tell of man’s
habitation, in order thereby to obtain the chronological connection
with the evolution of the history of mankind generally. That is the
palæontological method of historical research.
[Sidenote: Landmarks of Early Culture]
The palæontology of man has proved the Stone Age to be a general
primary stage of culture for the whole human race. All further general
progress in culture was affected by the discovery of the art of
metal-working--the extraction of the metals from their ores and the
casting and forging of them. The later and latest eras of culture are
the Metal Ages, as opposed to the Stone Ages. It is not the use of
metal in itself, but the above-mentioned metallurgical arts, that form
the criterion of the advance of culture beyond the bounds of the Stone
Age. Where, as in some parts of America, native copper was found in
abundance, this red malleable mineral could probably be worked in the
same way as stone, without any further progress necessarily developing
therefrom. The same may apply to meteor-iron, which is said to have
been used for arrows, together with stone points, by American tribes
who were otherwise in the age of stone and but poorly civilised.
[Illustration: From stone to metallic form
Growth of the stop-ridge
Growth of the wings
THE TRANSITION FROM STONE TO IRON
This series of diagrams, reproduced from specimens in the British
Museum, by permission of the Trustees, shows how the stone axehead
was used as the model for the metal axe or celt, and how that in
turn was modified as workers gained experience in the use of the
metal
]
In civilised lands it is chiefly metal casting and the forging of the
heated metal which have made it possible to produce better weapons and
tools and more valuable ornaments. The worked metals are first copper,
then the alloy of copper and tin that bears the name of classical
bronze, and to these are soon added gold and--especially in districts
rich in the metal, as in Spain--silver. Later on the extraction of iron
from its ores and the forging of that metal are discovered.
According to this course of metallurgical progress the first metal
period is distinguished as the Bronze Period, which is begun by a
Copper Period lasting more or less long in different places. The second
or later metal period is the Iron Period, in which we are living at the
present day. In the course of time, by gradually displacing bronze and
copper from the rank of metals worked for weapons and tools, this Iron
Age has developed to its present stage.
In Central Europe the pile-dwellings in the lakes of Western
Switzerland again present us with specially clear and uninterrupted
series of illustrations of the progress of culture from the Stone
Age to the Iron Age. Ending the Stone Age, we find first a period
of transition, in which, while stone continued to be principally
employed, a few ornaments, weapons, and tools of metal began to be
used. This metal is at first almost exclusively copper, with only
very little bronze; iron is quite absent. Copper objects have been
found in Western Switzerland by Victor Gross, most extensively in
Fenel’s lake-dwelling station, which otherwise still belongs to the
Stone Age. The majority of these are small daggers, formed after the
pattern of the flint daggers; some already possess rivetings for
fastening the blade to a handle. There are also chisels and small awls
in bone handles, beads, and small ornamental leaves, and hatchets
of the form of the simplest stone hatchets, with the edge hammered
out and broadened. Much has proved the existence of a Copper Period
corresponding to this description in the lake-dwelling in the Mond
See in Austria, and in Hungary the remains of a Copper Period are
particularly frequent. Parallel cases also occur in many other parts of
Europe, particularly, as Virchow has proved, in the Spanish Peninsula,
and in the Stone Age graves of Cujavia in Prussian Poland. These are
the more important as they are most closely related to the conditions
of culture discovered in the ancient strata of Hissarlik-Troy. Further
unmistakable analogies occur with very ancient finds in Cyprus, and
probably even with the oldest remains of Babylonian culture hitherto
known. Here, too, we may include the finds of copper in the Stone Age
of America.
[Sidenote: The Passing of the Stone Age]
So that in the normal and complete evolution of culture there seems to
be first a stratum of copper as the connecting link between the Stone
and Metal Ages; and this must be missing in those regions in which
progress from the stone to the metal culture was only brought about at
a relatively later period by external influences. This applies not only
to all modern races in an age of stone, who obtained metal in recent
times only through contact with European nations who had been living in
the Iron Period for thousands of years, but, curiously enough, also to
the greater part of Africa, where the use of iron was prevalent at a
prehistoric period.
Just as the modern Stone races passed straight from the Stone Age
into the most highly-developed Iron Age of the most advanced culture,
so also the stone stratum of Central and South Africa is immediately
overlaid by a stratum of iron culture, which was brought there in
ancient times, probably direct from Egypt. As there is in Egypt and
throughout North Africa a regular development from the Copper-bronze
Period to the complete iron culture, corresponding to the progress
of the metal cultures of Europe and Asia, the point of time is thus
chronologically fixed at which this important element of culture was
transmitted from Europe to the blacks of Central and South Africa.
[Illustration: WEAPONS USED BY MAN IN THE PERIODS OF DAWNING HISTORY
Reproduced chiefly from specimens in the British Museum.
]
[Sidenote: Advancing Civilisation in Bronze Age]
In Western Switzerland the transition period of copper is followed
without a gap in the development by the Bronze Period proper. With the
introduction of bronze all the conditions of life were more highly
developed in the sense of increased culture. With better tools the
stations of the Bronze Age could be erected at a greater distance from
the bank, often two hundred to three hundred yards; the space they
take up is also much greater. The piles are not only better preserved,
according as the time of their being driven in more nearly approaches
our own, but they are also better worked, are often square, and the
points that are rammed into the lake-bottom are better cut. The
settlements of the Bronze Age often cover an area of several hundred
square yards, and are no longer comparatively mean villages, as in the
Stone Age; the pile settlements of the Bronze Age are well-organised
market towns and even flourishing small cities, where a certain luxury
already prevails. The products of their industry are graced by that
beauty and elegance of form that only an advanced civilisation can
create. As in the Stone Age, so also in the Bronze Age of Central
and Northern Europe, the most important working-implement, which
was, however, also used as a weapon, was the axe, or celt. The most
primitive forms of axes, like the above-mentioned copper axes, still
resemble the simple stone axes: like these, they have no special
contrivance for fastening the handle. In more developed forms of axes
such contrivances for fastening the handle appear first in the form of
slight flanges, which become wider and wider; finally they develop into
regular wings, which, by curving towards one another, develop into two
almost closed lateral semi-canals on the upper side of the celt. In the
hollow celts a simple socket for the handle was cast in the making; an
additional means of fastening the handle was provided in a loop, which
also occurs on winged celts. Besides the celt, or axe-blade, broad
and narrow chisels of bronze occur in various forms for working wood.
A second chief type of instrument is the one-edged bronze knife with
elegantly curved back and a handle tongue.