BELGIAN CAVERNS.
Earliest Discoveries in Caves of Languedoc of Human Remains with
Bones of extinct Mammalia.
Researches in 1833 of Dr. Schmerling in the Liege Caverns.
Scattered Portions of Human Skeletons associated with Bones
of Elephant and Rhinoceros.
Distribution and probable Mode of Introduction of the Bones.
Implements of Flint and Bone.
Schmerling's Conclusions as to the Antiquity of Man ignored.
Present State of the Belgian Caves.
Human Bones recently found in Cave of Engihoul.
Engulfed Rivers.
Stalagmitic Crust.
Antiquity of the Human Remains in Belgium how proved.
Having hitherto considered those formations in which both the fossil
shells and the mammalia are of living species, we may now turn our
attention to those of older date, in which the shells being all recent,
some of the accompanying mammalia are extinct, or belong to species not
known to have lived within the times of history or tradition.
DISCOVERIES OF MM. TOURNAL AND CHRISTOL IN 1828 IN THE SOUTH OF FRANCE.
In the "Principles of Geology," when treating of the fossil remains
found in alluvium and the mud of caverns, I gave an account in 1832
of the investigations made by MM. Tournal and Christol in the South of
France.*
(* 1st edition volume 2 chapter 14 1832, and 9th edition
page 738, 1853.)
M. Tournal stated in his memoir that in the cavern of Bize, in the
department of the Aude, he had found human bones and teeth, together
with fragments of rude pottery, in the same mud and breccia cemented by
stalagmite in which land-shells of living species were embedded, and the
bones of mammalia, some of extinct, others of recent species. The human
bones were declared by his fellow-labourer, M. Marcel de Serres, to be
in the same chemical condition as those of the accompanying quadrupeds.*
(* "Annales des Sciences Naturelles" tome 15 1828 page 348.)
Speaking of these fossils of the Bize cavern five years later, M.
Tournal observed that they could not be referred, as some suggested,
to a "diluvial catastrophe," for they evidently had not been washed in
suddenly by a transient flood, but must have been introduced gradually,
together with the enveloping mud and pebbles, at successive periods.*
(* "Annales de Chimie et de Physique" 1833 page 161.)
M. Christol, who was engaged at the same time in similar researches in
another part of Languedoc, published an account of them a year later,
in which he described some human bones, as occurring in the cavern of
Pondres, near Nimes, in the same mud with the bones of an extinct hyaena
and rhinoceros.*
(* Christol, "Notice sur les Ossements humains des Cavernes
du Gard" Montpellier 1829.)
The cavern was in this instance filled up to the roof with mud and
gravel, in which fragments of two kinds of pottery were detected, the
lowest and rudest near the bottom of the cave, below the level of the
extinct mammalia.
It has never been questioned that the hyaena and rhinoceros found by M.
Christol were of extinct species; but whether the animals enumerated
by M. Tournal might not all of them be referred to quadrupeds which
are known to have been living in Europe in the historical period seems
doubtful. They were said to consist of a stag, an antelope, and a
goat, all named by M. Marcel de Serres as new; but the majority of
palaeontologists do not agree with this opinion. Still it is true, as
M. Lartet remarks, that the fauna of the cavern of Bize must be of very
high antiquity, as shown by the presence, not only of the Lithuanian
aurochs (Bison europaeus), but also of the reindeer, which has not been
an inhabitant of the South of France in historical times, and which,
in that country, is almost everywhere associated, whether in ancient
alluvium or in the mud of caverns, with the mammoth.
In my work before cited,* I stated that M. Desnoyers, an observer
equally well versed in geology and archaeology, had disputed the
conclusion arrived at by MM. Tournal and Christol, that the fossil
rhinoceros, hyaena, bear, and other lost species had once been
inhabitants of France contemporaneously with Man.
(* "Principles" 9th edition page 739.)
"The flint hatchets and arrow-heads," he said, "and the pointed bones
and coarse pottery of many French and English caves, agree precisely in
character with those found in the tumuli, and under the dolmens (rude
altars of unhewn stone) of the primitive inhabitants of Gaul, Britain,
and Germany. The human bones, therefore, in the caves which are
associated with such fabricated objects, must belong not to antediluvian
periods, but to a people in the same stage of civilization as those who
constructed the tumuli and altars."
"In the Gaulish monuments," he added, "we find, together with the
objects of industry above mentioned, the bones of wild and domestic
animals of species now inhabiting Europe, particularly of deer, sheep,
wild boars, dogs, horses, and oxen. This fact has been ascertained in
Quercy and other provinces; and it is supposed by antiquaries that the
animals in question were placed beneath the Celtic altars in memory of
sacrifices offered to the Gaulish divinity Hesus, and in the tombs to
commemorate funeral repasts, and also from a superstition prevalent
among savage nations, which induces them to lay up provisions for
the manes of the dead in a future life. But in none of these ancient
monuments have any bones been found of the elephant, rhinoceros, hyaena,
tiger, and other quadrupeds, such as are found in caves, which might
certainly have been expected had these species continued to flourish at
the time that this part of Gaul was inhabited by Man."*
(* Desnoyers, "Bulletin de la Societe Geologique de France"
tome 2 page 252; and article on Caverns, "Dictionnaire
Universelle d'Histoire Naturelle" Paris 1845.)
After giving no small weight to the arguments of M. Desnoyers, and
the writings of Dr. Buckland on the same subject, and myself visiting
several caves in Germany, I came to the opinion that the human bones
mixed with those of extinct animals, in osseous breccias and cavern
mud, in different parts of Europe, were probably not coeval. The caverns
having been at one period the dens of wild beasts, and having served
at other times as places of human habitation, worship, sepulture,
concealment, or defence, one might easily conceive that the bones of Man
and those of animals, which were strewed over the floors of subterranean
cavities, or which had fallen into tortuous rents connecting them
with the surface, might, when swept away by floods, be mingled in one
promiscuous heap in the same ossiferous mud or breccia.*
(* "Principles" 9th edition page 740.)
That such intermixtures have really taken place in some caverns, and
that geologists have occasionally been deceived, and have assigned to
one and the same period fossils which had really been introduced at
successive times, will readily be conceded. But of late years we have
obtained convincing proofs, as we shall see in the sequel, that the
mammoth, and many other extinct mammalian species very common in caves,
occur also in undisturbed alluvium, embedded in such a manner with
works of art, as to leave no room for doubt that Man and the mammoth
coexisted; Such discoveries have led me, and other geologists, to
reconsider the evidence previously derived from caves brought forward
in proof of the high antiquity of Man. With a view of re-examining this
evidence, I have lately explored several caverns in Belgium and other
countries, and re-read the principal memoirs and treatises treating of
the fossil remains preserved in them, the results of which inquiries I
shall now proceed to lay before the reader.
RESEARCHES, IN 1833-1834, OF DR. SCHMERLING IN THE CAVERNS NEAR LIEGE.
The late Dr. Schmerling of Liege, a skilful anatomist and
palaeontologist, after devoting several years to the exploring of the
numerous ossiferous caverns which border the valleys of the Meuse and
its tributaries, published two volumes descriptive of the contents of
more than forty caverns. One of these volumes consisted of an atlas of
plates, illustrative of the fossil bones.*
(* "Recherches sur les Ossements fossiles decouverts dans
les Cavernes de la Province de Liege", Liege 1833-1834.)
Many of the caverns had never before been entered by scientific
observers, and their floors were encrusted with unbroken stalagmite. At
a very early stage of his investigations, Dr. Schmerling found the bones
of Man so rolled and scattered as to preclude all idea of their having
been intentionally buried on the spot. He also remarked that they were
of the same colour, and in the same condition as to the amount of animal
matter contained in them, as those of the accompanying animals, some
of which, like the cave-bear, hyaena, elephant, and rhinoceros, were
extinct; others, like the wild cat, beaver, wild boar, roe-deer, wolf,
and hedgehog, still extant. The fossils were lighter than fresh bones,
except such as had their pores filled with carbonate of lime, in which
case they were often much heavier. The human remains of most frequent
occurrence were teeth detached from the jaw, and the carpal, metacarpal,
tarsal, metatarsal, and phalangeal bones separated from the rest of the
skeleton. The corresponding bones of the cave-bear, the most abundant
of the accompanying mammalia, were also found in the Liege caverns
more commonly than any others, and in the same scattered condition.
Occasionally, some of the long bones of mammalia were observed to
have been first broken across, and then reunited or cemented again by
stalagmite, as they lay on the floor of the cave.
No gnawed bones nor any coprolites were found by Schmerling. He
therefore inferred that the caverns of the province of Liege had not
been the dens of wild beasts, but that their organic and inorganic
contents had been swept into them by streams communicating with the
surface of the country. The bones, he suggested, may often have been
rolled in the beds of such streams before they reached their underground
destination. To the same agency the introduction of many land-shells
dispersed through the cave-mud was ascribed, such as Helix nemoralis,
H. lapicida, H. pomatia, and others of living species. Mingled with such
shells, in some rare instances, the bones of freshwater fish, and of a
snake (Coluber), as well as of several birds, were detected.
The occurrence here and there of bones in a very perfect state, or of
several bones belonging to the same skeleton in natural juxtaposition,
and having all their most delicate apophyses uninjured, while many
accompanying bones in the same breccia were rolled, broken, or decayed,
was accounted for by supposing that portions of carcasses were sometimes
floated in during floods while still clothed with their flesh. No
example was discovered of an entire skeleton, not even of one of the
smaller mammalia, the bones of which are usually the least injured.
The incompleteness of each skeleton was especially ascertained in regard
to the human subjects, Dr. Schmerling being careful, whenever a fragment
of such presented itself, to explore the cavern himself, and see whether
any other bones of the same skeleton could be found. In the Engis
cavern, distant about eight miles to the south-west of Liege, on the
left bank of the Meuse, the remains of at least three human individuals
were disinterred. The skull of one of these, that of a young person, was
embedded by the side of a mammoth's tooth. It was entire but so fragile,
that nearly all of it fell to pieces during its extraction. Another
skull, that of an adult individual, and the only one preserved by Dr.
Schmerling in a sufficient state of integrity to enable the anatomist to
speculate on the race to which it belonged, was buried 5 feet deep in a
breccia, in which the tooth of a rhinoceros, several bones of a horse,
and some of the reindeer, together with some ruminants, occurred. This
skull, now in the museum of the University of Liege, is figured in
Chapter 5 (Figure 2), where further observations will be offered on
its anatomical character, after a fuller account of the contents of the
Liege caverns has been laid before the reader.
On the right bank of the Meuse, on the opposite side of the river to
Engis, is the cavern of Engihoul. Bones of extinct animals mingled with
those of Man were observed to abound in both caverns; but with this
difference, that whereas in the Engis cave there were several human
crania and very few other bones, in Engihoul there occurred numerous
bones of the extremities belonging to at least three human individuals,
and only two small fragments of a cranium. The like capricious
distribution held good in other caverns, especially with reference to
the cave-bear, the most frequent of the extinct mammalia. Thus, for
example in the cave of Chokier, skulls of the bear were few, and other
parts of the skeleton abundant, whereas in several other caverns these
proportions were exactly reversed, while at Goffontaine skulls of
the bear and other parts of the skeleton were found in their natural
numerical proportions. Speaking generally, it may be said that human
bones, where any were met with, occurred at all depths in the cave-mud
and gravel, sometimes above and sometimes below those of the bear,
elephant, rhinoceros, hyaena, etc.
Some rude flint implements of the kind commonly called flint knives or
flakes, of a triangular form in the cross section (as in Figure 14),
were found by Schmerling dispersed generally through the cave-mud, but
he was too much engrossed with his osteological inquiries to collect
them diligently. He preserved some few of them, however, which I have
seen in the museum at Liege. He also discovered in the cave of Chokier,
2 1/2 miles south-west from Liege, a polished and jointed needle-shaped
bone, with a hole pierced obliquely through it at the base; such a
cavity, he observed, as had never given passage to an artery. This
instrument was embedded in the same matrix with the remains of a
rhinoceros.*
(* Schmerling part 2 page 177.)
Another cut bone and several artificially-shaped flints were found in
the Engis cave, near the human skulls before alluded to. Schmerling
observed, and we shall have to refer to the fact in the sequel (Chapter
8), that although in some forty fossiliferous caves explored by
him human bones were the exception, yet these flint implements were
universal, and he added that "none of them could have been subsequently
introduced, being precisely in the same position as the remains of
the accompanying animals." "I therefore," he continues, "attach great
importance to their presence; for even if I had not found the human
bones under conditions entirely favourable to their being considered
as belonging to the antediluvian epoch, proofs of Man's existence would
still have been supplied by the cut bones and worked flints."*
(* Schmerling, part 2 page 179.)
Dr. Schmerling, therefore, had no hesitation in concluding from the
various facts ascertained by him, that Man once lived in the Liege
district contemporaneously with the cave-bear and several other extinct
species of quadrupeds. But he was much at a loss when he attempted to
invent a theory to explain the former state of the fauna of the region
now drained by the Meuse; for he shared the notion, then very prevalent
among naturalists, that the mammoth and the hyaena* were beasts of a
warmer climate than that now proper to Western Europe.
(* Ibid. part 2 pages 70 and 96.)
In order to account for the presence of such "tropical species," he was
half-inclined to imagine that they had been transported by a flood from
some distant region; then again he raised the question whether they
might not have been washed out of an older alluvium, which may have
pre-existed in the neighbourhood. This last hypothesis was directly at
variance with his own statements, that the remains of the mammoth and
hyaena were identical in appearance, colour, and chemical condition with
those of the bear and other associated fossil animals, none of which
exhibited signs of having been previously enveloped in any dissimilar
matrix. Another enigma which led Schmerling astray in some of his
geological speculations was the supposed presence of the agouti, a
South American rodent, "proper to the torrid zone." My friend M. Lartet,
guided by Schmerling's figures of the teeth of this species, suggests,
and I have little doubt with good reason, that they appertain to the
porcupine, a genus found fossil in Pleistocene deposits of certain
caverns in the south of France.
In the year 1833, I passed through Liege, on my way to the Rhine, and
conversed with Dr. Schmerling, who showed me his splendid collection,
and when I expressed some incredulity respecting the alleged antiquity
of the fossil human bones, he pointedly remarked that if I doubted their
having been contemporaneous with the bear or rhinoceros, on the ground
of Man being a species of more modern date, I ought equally to doubt the
co-existence of all the other living species, such as the red deer, roe,
wild cat, wild boar, wolf, fox, weasel, beaver, hare, rabbit, hedgehog,
mole, dormouse, field-mouse, water-rat, shrew, and others, the bones
of which he had found scattered everywhere indiscriminately through the
same mud with the extinct quadrupeds. The year after this conversation
I cited Schmerling's opinions, and the facts bearing on the antiquity of
Man, in the 3rd edition of my "Principles of Geology" (page 161, 1834),
and in succeeding editions, without pretending to call in question their
trustworthiness, but at the same time without giving them the weight
which I now consider they were entitled to. He had accumulated ample
evidence to prove that Man had been introduced into the earth at an
earlier period than geologists were then willing to believe.
One positive fact, it will be said, attested by so competent a witness,
ought to have outweighed any amount of negative testimony, previously
accumulated, respecting the non-occurrence elsewhere of human remains
in formations of the like antiquity. In reply, I can only plead that
a discovery which seems to contradict the general tenor of previous
investigations is naturally received with much hesitation. To have
undertaken in 1832, with a view of testing its truth, to follow the
Belgian philosopher through every stage of his observations and proofs,
would have been no easy task even for one well-skilled in geology and
osteology. To be let down, as Schmerling was, day after day, by a rope
tied to a tree, so as to slide to the foot of the first opening of the
Engis cave,* where the best-preserved human skulls were found; and,
after thus gaining access to the first subterranean gallery, to creep on
all fours through a contracted passage leading to larger chambers, there
to superintend by torchlight, week after week and year after year,
the workmen who were breaking through the stalagmitic crust as hard as
marble, in order to remove piece by piece the underlying bone-breccia
nearly as hard; to stand for hours with one's feet in the mud, and
with water dripping from the roof on one's head, in order to mark the
position and guard against the loss of each single bone of a skeleton;
and at length, after finding leisure, strength, and courage for all
these operations, to look forward, as the fruits of one's labour, to the
publication of unwelcome intelligence, opposed to the prepossessions
of the scientific as well as of the unscientific public--when these
circumstances are taken into account, we need scarcely wonder, not only
that a passing traveller failed to stop and scrutinise the evidence,
but that a quarter of a century should have elapsed before even the
neighbouring professors of the University of Liege came forth to
vindicate the truthfulness of their indefatigable and clear-sighted
countryman.
(* Schmerling part 1 page 30.)
In 1860, when I revisited Liege, twenty-six years after my interview
with Schmerling, I found that several of the caverns described by him
had in the interval been annihilated. Not a vestige, for example, of the
caves of Engis, Chokier, and Goffontaine remained. The calcareous stone,
in the heart of which the cavities once existed, had been quarried away,
and removed bodily for building and lime-making. Fortunately, a great
part of the Engihoul cavern, situated on the right bank of the Meuse,
was still in the same state as when Schmerling delved into it in 1831,
and drew from it the bones of three human skeletons. I determined,
therefore, to examine it, and was so fortunate as to obtain the
assistance of a zealous naturalist of Liege, Professor Malaise, who
accompanied me to the cavern, where we engaged some workmen to break
through the crust of stalagmite, so that we could search for bones in
the undisturbed earth beneath. Bones and teeth of the cave-bear were
soon found, and several other extinct quadrupeds which Schmerling has
enumerated. My companion, continuing the work perseveringly for weeks
after my departure, succeeded at length in extracting from the same
deposit, at the depth of 2 feet below the crust of stalagmite, three
fragments of a human skull, and two perfect lower jaws with teeth, all
associated in such a manner with the bones of bears, large pachyderms,
and ruminants, and so precisely resembling these in colour and state of
preservation, as to leave no doubt in his mind that Man was contemporary
with the extinct animals. Professor Malaise has given figures of the
human remains in the "Bulletin" of the Royal Academy of Belgium for
1860.*
(* Volume 10 page 546.)
The rock in which the Liege caverns occur belongs generally to the
Carboniferous or Mountain Limestone, in some few cases only to the older
Devonian formation. Whenever the work of destruction has not gone too
far, magnificent sections, sometimes 200 and 300 feet in height, are
exposed to view. They confirm Schmerling's doctrine, that most of the
materials, organic and inorganic, now filling the caverns, have been
washed into them through narrow vertical or oblique fissures, the upper
extremities of which are choked up with soil and gravel, and would
scarcely ever be discoverable at the surface, especially in so wooded
a country. Among the sections obtained by quarrying, one of the
finest which I saw was in the beautiful valley of Fond du Foret, above
Chaudefontaine, not far from the village of Magnee, where one of the
rents communicating with the surface has been filled up to the brim with
rounded and half-rounded stones, angular pieces of limestone and shale,
besides sand and mud, together with bones, chiefly of the cave-bear.
Connected with this main duct, which is from 1 to 2 feet in width, are
several minor ones, each from 1 to 3 inches wide, also extending to the
upper country or table-land, and choked up with similar materials. They
are inclined at angles of 30 and 40 degrees, their walls being generally
coated with stalactite, pieces of which have here and there been broken
off and mingled with the contents of the rents, thus helping to explain
why we so often meet with detached pieces of that substance in the mud
and breccia of the Belgian caves. It is not easy to conceive that a
solid horizontal floor of hard stalagmite should, after its formation,
be broken up by running water; but when the walls of steep and tortuous
rents, serving as feeders to the principal fissures and to inferior
vaults and galleries are encrusted with stalagmite, some of the
incrustation may readily be torn up when heavy fragments of rock are
hurried by a flood through passages inclined at angles of 30 or 40
degrees.
The decay and decomposition of the fossil bones seem to have been
arrested in most of the caves by a constant supply of water charged with
carbonate of lime, which dripped from the roofs while the caves were
becoming gradually filled up. By similar agency the mud, sand, and
pebbles were usually consolidated.
The following explanation of this phenomenon has been suggested by the
eminent chemist Liebig. On the surface of Franconia, where the limestone
abounds in caverns, is a fertile soil in which vegetable matter is
continually decaying. This mould or humus, being acted on by moisture
and air, evolves carbonic acid, which is dissolved by rain. The rain
water, thus impregnated, permeates the porous limestone, dissolves
a portion of it, and afterwards, when the excess of carbonic acid
evaporates in the caverns, parts with the calcareous matter and forms
stalactite. So long as water flows, even occasionally, through a suite
of caverns, no layer of pure stalagmite can be produced; hence the
formation of such a layer is generally an event posterior in date to the
cessation of the old system of drainage, an event which might be brought
about by an earthquake causing new fissures, or by the river wearing its
way down to a lower level, and thenceforth running in a new channel.
In all the subterranean cavities, more than forty in number, explored
by Schmerling, he only observed one cave, namely that of Chokier, where
there were two regular layers of stalagmite, divided by fossiliferous
cave-mud. In this instance, we may suppose that the stream, after
flowing for a long period at one level, cut its way down to an inferior
suite of caverns, and, flowing through them for centuries, choked them
up with debris; after which it rose once more to its original higher
level: just as in the Mountain Limestone district of Yorkshire some
rivers, habitually absorbed by a "swallow hole," are occasionally unable
to discharge all their water through it; in which case they rise and
rush through a higher subterranean passage, which was at some former
period in the regular line of drainage, as is often attested by the
fluviatile gravel still contained in it.
There are now in the basin of the Meuse, not far from Liege, several
examples of engulfed brooks and rivers: some of them, like that of St.
Hadelin, east of Chaudefontaine, which reappears after an underground
course of a mile or two; others, like the Vesdre, which is lost near
Goffontaine, and after a time re-emerges; some, again, like the torrent
near Magnee, which, after entering a cave, never again comes to the day.
In the season of floods such streams are turbid at their entrance, but
clear as a mountain-spring where they issue again; so that they must
be slowly filling up cavities in the interior with mud, sand, pebbles,
snail-shells, and the bones of animals which may be carried away during
floods.
The manner in which some of the large thigh and shank bones of the
rhinoceros and other pachyderms are rounded, while some of the smaller
bones of the same creatures, and of the hyaena, bear, and horse, are
reduced to pebbles, shows that they were often transported for some
distance in the channels of torrents, before they found a resting-place.
When we desire to reason or speculate on the probable antiquity of human
bones found fossil in such situations as the caverns near Liege, there
are two classes of evidence to which we may appeal for our guidance.
First, considerations of the time required to allow of many species
of carnivorous and herbivorous animals, which flourished in the cave
period, becoming first scarce, and then so entirely extinct as we have
seen that they had become before the era of the Danish peat and Swiss
lake dwellings; secondly, the great number of centuries necessary for
the conversion of the physical geography of the Liege district from its
ancient to its present configuration; so many old underground channels,
through which brooks and rivers flowed in the cave period, being now
laid dry and choked up.
The great alterations which have taken place in the shape of the valley
of the Meuse and some of its tributaries are often demonstrated by the
abrupt manner in which the mouths of fossiliferous caverns open in the
face of perpendicular precipices 200 feet or more in height above
the present streams. There appears also, in many cases, to be such a
correspondence in the openings of caverns on opposite sides of some of
the valleys, both large and small, as to incline one to suspect that
they originally belonged to a series of tunnels and galleries which
were continuous before the present system of drainage came into play, or
before the existing valleys were scooped out. Other signs of subsequent
fluctuations are afforded by gravel containing elephant's bones at
slight elevations above the Meuse and several of its tributaries. It may
be objected that, according to the present rate of change, no lapse of
ages would suffice to bring about such revolutions in physical geography
as we are here contemplating. This may be true. It is more than probable
that the rate of change was once far more active than it is now in the
basin of the Meuse. Some of the nearest volcanoes, namely, those of
the Lower Eifel about 60 miles to the eastward, seem to have been in
eruption in Pleistocene times, and may perhaps have been connected
and coeval with repeated risings or sinkings of the land in the Liege
district. It might be said, with equal truth, that according to the
present course of events, no series of ages would suffice to reproduce
such an assemblage of cones and craters as those of the Eifel (near
Andernach, for example); and yet some of them may be of sufficiently
modern date to belong to the era when Man was contemporary with the
mammoth and rhinoceros in the basin of the Meuse.
But, although we may be unable to estimate the minimum of time required
for the changes in physical geography above alluded to, we cannot
fail to perceive that the duration of the period must have been very
protracted, and that other ages of comparative inaction may have
followed, separating the Pleistocene from the historical periods, and
constituting an interval no less indefinite in its duration.