IMPLEMENTS.
General Position of Drift with extinct Mammalia in Valleys.
Discoveries of M. Boucher de Perthes at Abbeville.
Flint Implements found also at St. Acheul, near Amiens.
Curiosity awakened by the systematic Exploration of the Brixham Cave.
Flint Knives in same, with Bones of extinct Mammalia.
Superposition of Deposits in the Cave.
Visits of English and French Geologists to Abbeville and Amiens.
PLEISTOCENE ALLUVIUM CONTAINING FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN THE VALLEY OF THE
SOMME.
Throughout a large part of Europe we find at moderate elevations above
the present river-channels, usually at a height of less than 40 feet,
but sometimes much higher, beds of gravel, sand, and loam containing
bones of the elephant, rhinoceros, horse, ox, and other quadrupeds, some
of extinct, others of living, species, belonging for the most part to
the fauna already alluded to in the fourth chapter as characteristic
of the interior of caverns. The greater part of these deposits contain
fluviatile shells, and have undoubtedly been accumulated in ancient
river-beds. These old channels have long since been dry, the streams
which once flowed in them having shifted their position, deepening the
valleys, and often widening them on one side.
It has naturally been asked, if Man co-existed with the extinct species
of the caves, why were his remains and the works of his hands never
embedded outside the caves in ancient river-gravel containing the same
fossil fauna? Why should it be necessary for the geologist to resort
for evidence of the antiquity of our race to the dark recesses of
underground vaults and tunnels which may have served as places of refuge
or sepulture to a succession of human beings and wild animals, and where
floods may have confounded together in one breccia the memorials of
the fauna of more than one epoch? Why do we not meet with a similar
assemblage of the relics of Man, and of living and extinct quadrupeds,
in places where the strata can be thoroughly scrutinised in the light of
day?
Recent researches have at length demonstrated that such memorials, so
long sought for in vain, do in fact exist, and their recognition is
the chief cause of the more favourable reception now given to the
conclusions which MM. Tournal, Christol, Schmerling, and others, arrived
at thirty years ago respecting the fossil contents of caverns. [12]
A very important step in this new direction was made thirteen years
after the publication of Schmerling's researches, by M. Boucher de
Perthes, who found in ancient alluvium at Abbeville, in Picardy, some
flint implements, the relative antiquity of which was attested by their
geological position. The antiquarian knowledge of their discoverer
enabled him to recognise in their rude and peculiar type a character
distinct from that of the polished stone weapons of a later period,
usually called "celts." In the first volume of his "Antiquites
Celtiques," published in 1847, M. Boucher de Perthes styled these older
tools "antediluvian," because they came from the lowest beds of a series
of ancient alluvial strata bordering the valley of the Somme, which
geologists had termed "diluvium." He had begun to collect these
implements in 1841. From that time they had been annually dug out of the
drift or deposits of gravel and sand, of which fine sections were laid
open from 20 to 35 feet in depth, whenever excavations were made in
repairing the fortifications of Abbeville; or as often as flints were
wanted for the roads, or loam for making bricks. For years previously
bones of quadrupeds of the genera elephant, rhinoceros, bear, hyaena,
stag, ox, horse, and others, had been collected there, and sent from
time to time to Paris to be examined and named by Cuvier, who had
described them in his Ossements Fossiles. A correct account of the
associated flint tools and of their position was given in 1847 by M.
Boucher de Perthes in his work above cited, and they were stated to
occur at various depths, often 20 or 30 feet from the surface, in sand
and gravel, especially in those strata which were nearly in contact with
the subjacent white Chalk. But the scientific world had no faith in
the statement that works of art, however rude, had been met with in
undisturbed beds of such antiquity. Few geologists visited Abbeville
in winter, when the sand-pits were open, and when they might have
opportunities of verifying the sections, and judging whether the
instruments had really been embedded by natural causes in the same
strata with the bones of the mammoth, rhinoceros, and other extinct
mammalia. Some of the tools figured in the "Antiquites Celtiques" were
so rudely shaped, that many imagined them to have owed their peculiar
forms to accidental fracture in a river's bed; others suspected frauds
on the part of the workmen, who might have fabricated them for sale, or
that the gravel had been disturbed, and that the worked flints had got
mingled with the bones of the mammoth long after that animal and its
associates had disappeared from the earth.
No one was more sceptical than the late eminent physician of Amiens, Dr.
Rigollot, who had long before (in the year 1819) written a memoir on the
fossil mammalia of the valley of the Somme. He was at length induced to
visit Abbeville, and, having inspected the collection of M. Boucher de
Perthes, returned home resolved to look for himself for flint tools in
the gravel-pits near Amiens. There, accordingly, at a distance of about
30 miles from Abbeville, he immediately found abundance of similar flint
implements, precisely the same in the rudeness of their make, and the
same in their geological position; some of them in gravel nearly on a
level with the Somme, others in similar deposits resting on Chalk at a
height of about 90 feet above the river.
Dr. Rigollot having in the course of four years obtained several hundred
specimens of these tools, most of them from St. Acheul in the south-east
suburbs of Amiens, lost no time in communicating an account of them to
the scientific world, in a memoir illustrated by good figures of the
worked flints and careful sections of the beds. These sections were
executed by M. Buteux, an engineer well qualified for the task, who had
written a good description of the geology of Picardy. Dr. Rigollot, in
this memoir, pointed out most clearly that it was not in the vegetable
soil, nor in the brick-earth with land and freshwater shells next below,
but in the lower beds of coarse flint-gravel, usually 12, 20, or 25 feet
below the surface, that the implements were met with, just as they had
been previously stated by M. Boucher de Perthes to occur at Abbeville.
The conclusion, therefore, which was legitimately deduced from all the
facts, was that the flint tools and their fabricators were coeval with
the extinct mammalia embedded in the same strata.
BRIXHAM CAVE, NEAR TORQUAY, DEVONSHIRE.
Four years after the appearance of Dr. Rigollot's paper, a sudden
change of opinion was brought about in England respecting the probable
co-existence, at a former period, of Man and many extinct mammalia, in
consequence of the results obtained from a careful exploration of a cave
at Brixham, near Torquay, in Devonshire. As the new views very generally
adopted by English geologists had no small influence on the subsequent
progress of opinion in France, I shall interrupt my account of the
researches made in the valley of the Somme, by a brief notice of those
which were carried on in 1858 in Devonshire with more than usual care
and scientific method. Dr. Buckland, in his celebrated work, entitled
"Reliquiae Diluvianae," published in 1823, in which he treated of the
organic remains contained in caves, fissures, and "diluvial gravel" in
England, had given a clear statement of the results of his own original
observations, and had declared that none of the human bones or stone
implements met with by him in any of the caverns could be considered
to be as old as the mammoth and other extinct quadrupeds. Opinions in
harmony with this conclusion continued until very lately to be generally
in vogue in England; although about the time that Schmerling was
exploring the Liege caves, the Reverend Mr. McEnery, a Catholic priest,
residing near Torquay, had found in a cave one mile east of that town,
called "Kent's Hole," in red loam covered with stalagmite, not only
bones of the mammoth, tichorhine rhinoceros, hippopotamus, cave-bear,
and other mammalia, but several remarkable flint tools, some of which he
supposed to be of great antiquity, while there were also remains of Man
in the same cave of a later date.*
(* The manuscript and plates prepared for a joint memoir on
Kent's Hole, by Mr. McEnery and Dr. Buckland, have recently
been published by Mr. Vivian of Torquay, from which, as well
as from some of the unprinted manuscript, I infer that Mr.
McEnery only refrained out of deference to Dr. Buckland from
declaring his belief in the contemporaneousness of certain
flint implements of an antique type and the bones of extinct
animals. Two of these implements from Kent's Hole, figured
in Plate 12 of the posthumous work above alluded to,
approach very closely in form and size to the common
Abbeville implements.)
About ten years afterwards, in a "Memoir on the Geology of South
Devon," published in 1842 by the Geological Society of London,* an able
geologist, Mr. Godwin-Austen, declared that he had obtained in the same
cave (Kent's Hole) works of Man from undisturbed loam or clay, under
stalagmite, mingled with the remains of extinct animals, and that all
these must have been introduced "before the stalagmite flooring had been
formed." He maintained that such facts could not be explained away by
the hypothesis of sepulture, as in Dr. Buckland's well-known case of
the human skeleton of Paviland, because in the Devon cave the flint
implements were widely distributed through the loam, and lay beneath the
stalagmite.
(* "Transactions of the Geological Society" 2nd series
volume 6 page 444.)
As the osseous and other contents of Kent's Hole had, by repeated
diggings, been thrown into much confusion, it was thought desirable in
1858, when a new and intact bone-cave was discovered at Brixham,
about four miles south of Torquay, to have a thorough and systematic
examination made of it. The Royal Society, chiefly at the instance of
Dr. Falconer, made two grants towards defraying the expenses, and
Miss Burdett-Coutts contributed liberally towards the same object. A
committee of geologists was charged with the investigations, among whom
Dr. Falconer and Mr. Prestwich took a prominent part, visiting Torquay
while the excavations were in progress. Mr. Pengelly, another member
of the committee, well qualified for the task by nearly twenty years'
previous experience in cave explorations, zealously directed and
superintended the work. By him, in 1859, I was conducted through
the subterranean galleries after they had been cleared out; and Dr.
Falconer, who was also at Torquay, showed me the numerous fossils which
had been discovered, and which he was then studying, all numbered and
labelled, with reference to a journal in which the geological position
of each specimen was recorded with scrupulous care.
The discovery of the existence of this suite of caverns near the sea at
Brixham was made accidentally by the roof of one of them being broken
through in quarrying. None of the four external openings now exposed
to view in steep cliffs or in the sloping side of a valley were visible
before the breccia and earthy matter which blocked them up were removed
during the late exploration. According to a ground-plan drawn up by
Professor Ramsay, it appears that some of the passages which run nearly
north and south are fissures connected with the vertical dislocation of
the rocks, while another set, running nearly east and west, are tunnels,
which have the appearance of having been to a great extent hollowed out
by the action of running water. The central or main entrance, leading to
what is called the "reindeer gallery," because a perfect antler of that
animal was found sticking in the stalagmitic floor, is 95 feet above
the level of the sea, being also 78 above the bottom of the adjoining
valley. The united length of the galleries which were cleared out
amounted to several hundred feet. Their width never exceeded 8 feet.
They were sometimes filled up to the roof with mud, but occasionally
there was a considerable space between the roof and floor. The latter,
in the case of the fissure-caves, was covered with stalagmite, but
in the tunnels it was usually free from any such incrustation. The
following was the general succession of the deposits forming the
contents of the underground passages and channels:--
First. At the top, a layer of stalagmite varying in thickness from 1 to
15 inches, which sometimes contained bones, such as the reindeer's horn,
already mentioned, and an entire humerus of the cave-bear.
Secondly. Next below, loam or bone-earth, of an ochreous red colour,
with angular stones and some pebbles, from 2 to 13 feet in thickness.
Thirdly. At the bottom of all, gravel with many rounded pebbles in
it. This was everywhere removed so long as the tunnels which narrowed
downwards were wide enough to be worked. It proved to be almost entirely
barren of fossils.
The mammalia obtained from the bone-earth consisted of Elephas
primigenius, or mammoth; Rhinoceros tichorhinus; Ursus spelaeus; Hyaena
spelaea; Felis spelaea, or the cave-lion; Cervus tarandus, or the
reindeer; a species of horse, ox, and several rodents, and others not
yet determined.
No human bones were obtained anywhere during these excavations, but many
flint knives, chiefly from the lowest part of the bone-earth; and one of
the most perfect lay at the depth of 13 feet from the surface, and was
covered with bone-earth of that thickness. Neglecting the less perfect
specimens, some of which were met with even in the lowest gravel,
about fifteen knives, recognised as artificially formed by the most
experienced antiquaries, were taken from the bone-earth, and usually
from near the bottom. Such knives, considered apart from the associated
mammalia, afford in themselves no safe criterion of antiquity, as
they might belong to any part of the age of stone, similar tools
being sometimes met with in tumuli posterior in date to the era of the
introduction of bronze. But the contemporaneity of those at Brixham with
the extinct animals is demonstrated not only by the occurrence at one
point in overlying stalagmite of the bone of a cave-bear, but also
by the discovery at the same level in the bone-earth, and in close
proximity to a very perfect flint tool, of the entire left hind-leg of
a cave-bear. This specimen, which was shown me by Dr. Falconer and Mr.
Pengelly, was exhumed from the earthy deposit in the reindeer gallery,
near its junction with the flint-knife gallery, at the distance of about
sixty-five feet from the main entrance. The mass of earth containing
it was removed entire, and the matrix cleared away carefully by Dr.
Falconer in the presence of Mr. Pengelly. Every bone was in its natural
place, the femur, tibia, fibula, ankle-bone, or astragalus, all in
juxtaposition. Even the patella or detached bone of the knee-pan was
searched for, and not in vain. Here, therefore, we have evidence of an
entire limb not having been washed in a fossil state out of an older
alluvium, and then swept afterwards into a cave, so as to be mingled
with flint implements, but having been introduced when clothed with
its flesh, or at least when it had the separate bones bound together by
their natural ligaments, and in that state buried in mud.
If they were not all of contemporary date, it is clear from this case,
and from the humerus of the Ursus spelaeus, before cited, as found in
a floor of stalagmite, that the bear lived after the flint tools were
manufactured, or in other words, that Man in this district preceded the
cave-bear.
A glance at the position of Windmill Hill, in which the caverns are
situated, and a brief survey of the valleys which bound it on three
sides, are enough to satisfy a geologist that the drainage and
geographical features of this region have undergone great changes since
the gravel and bone-earth were carried by streams into the subterranean
cavities above described. Some worn pebbles of haematite, in particular,
can only have come from their nearest parent rock, at a period when the
valleys immediately adjoining the caves were much shallower than they
now are. The reddish loam in which the bones are embedded is such as
may be seen on the surface of limestone in the neighbourhood, but the
currents which were formerly charged with such mud must have run at a
level 78 feet above that of the stream now flowing in the same valley.
It was remarked by Mr. Pengelly that the stones and bones in the loam
had their longest axes parallel to the direction of the tunnels and
fissures, showing that they were deposited by the action of a stream.*
(* Pengelly, "Geologist" volume 4 1861 page 153.)
It appears that so long as the flowing water had force enough to propel
stony fragments, no layer of fine mud could accumulate, and so long as
there was a regular current capable of carrying in fine mud and bones,
no superficial crust of stalagmite. In some passages, as before stated,
stalagmite was wanting, while in one place seven or eight alternations
of stalagmite and loam were observed, seeming to indicate a prevalence
of more rainy seasons, succeeded by others, when the water was for
a time too low to flood the area where the calcareous incrustation
accumulated.
If the regular sequence of the three deposits of pebbles, mud, and
stalagmite was the result of the causes above explained, the order
of superposition would be constant, yet we could not be sure that the
gravel in one passage might not sometimes be coeval with the bone-earth
or stalagmite in another.
If therefore the flint knives had not been very widely dispersed, and if
one of them had not been at the bottom of the bone-earth, close to
the leg of the bear above described, their antiquity relatively to the
extinct mammalia might have been questioned. No coprolites were found in
the Brixham excavations, and very few gnawed bones. These few may have
been brought from some distance before they reached their place of
rest. Upon the whole, the same conclusion which Dr. Schmerling came to,
respecting the filling up of the caverns near Liege, seems applicable to
the caves of Brixham.
Dr. Falconer, after aiding in the investigations above alluded to near
Torquay, stopped at Abbeville on his way to Sicily, in the autumn of
1858, and saw there the collection of M. Boucher de Perthes. Being at
once satisfied that the flints called hatchets had really been fashioned
by the hand of Man, he urged Mr. Prestwich, by letter, thoroughly to
explore the geology of the valley of the Somme. This he accordingly
accomplished, in company with Mr. John Evans [13], of the Society
of Antiquaries, and, before his return that same year, succeeded in
dissipating all doubts from the minds of his geological friends by
extracting, with his own hands, from a bed of undisturbed gravel, at St.
Acheul, a well-shaped flint hatchet. This implement was buried in the
gravel at a depth of 17 feet from the surface, and was lying on its flat
side. There were no signs of vertical rents in the enveloping matrix,
nor in the overlying beds of sand and loam, in which were many land and
freshwater shells; so that it was impossible to imagine that the tool
had gradually worked its way downwards, as some had suggested, through
the incumbent soil, into an older formation.*
(* Prestwich, "Proceedings of the Royal Society" 1859 and
"Philosophical Transactions" 1860.)
There was no one in England whose authority deserved to have so much
weight in overcoming incredulity in regard to the antiquity of the
implements in question. For Mr. Prestwich, besides having published a
series of important memoirs on the Tertiary formations of Europe, had
devoted many years specially to the study of the drift and its organic
remains. His report, therefore, to the Royal Society, accompanied by a
photograph showing the position of the flint tool in situ before it was
removed from its matrix, not only satisfied many inquirers, but induced
others to visit Abbeville and Amiens; and one of these, Mr. Flower, who
accompanied Mr. Prestwich on his second excursion to St. Acheul, in June
1859, succeeded, by digging into the bank of gravel, in disinterring,
at the depth of 22 feet from the surface, a fine, symmetrically-shaped
weapon of an oval form, lying in and beneath strata which were observed
by many witnesses to be perfectly undisturbed.*
(* "Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society" volume 16
1860 page 190.)
Shortly afterwards, in the year 1859, I visited the same pits, and
obtained seventy flint tools, one of which was taken out while I was
present, though I did not see it before it had fallen from the matrix.
I expressed my opinion in favour of the antiquity of the flint tools to
the meeting of the British Association at Aberdeen, in the same year.*
(* See "Report of British Association" for 1859. )
On my way through Rouen, I stated my convictions on this subject to
M. George Pouchet, who immediately betook himself to St. Acheul,
commissioned by the municipality of Rouen, and did not quit the pits
till he had seen one of the hatchets extracted from gravel in its
natural position.*
(* "Actes du Musee d'Histoire Naturelle de Rouen" 1860 page
33.)
M. Gaudry also gave the following account of his researches in the same
year to the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris. "The great point was
not to leave the workmen for a single instant, and to satisfy oneself
by actual inspection whether the hatchets were found in situ. I caused a
deep excavation to be made, and found nine hatchets, most distinctly
in situ in the diluvium, associated with teeth of Equus fossilis and a
species of Bos, different from any now living, and similar to that of
the diluvium and of caverns."*
(* "Comptes rendus" September 26 and October 3, 1859.)
In 1859, M. Hebert, an original observer of the highest authority,
declared to the Geological Society of France that he had, in 1854, or
four years before Mr. Prestwich's visit to St. Acheul, seen the sections
at Abbeville and Amiens, and had come to the opinion that the hatchets
were imbedded in the "lower diluvium," and that their origin was as
ancient as that of the mammoth and the rhinoceros. M. Desnoyers also
made excavations after M. Gaudry, at St. Acheul, in 1859, with the same
results.*
(* "Bulletin" volume 17 page 18.)
After a lively discussion on the subject in England and France, it was
remembered, not only that there were numerous recorded cases leading to
similar conclusions in regard to cavern deposits, but, also, that Mr.
Frere had, so long ago as 1797, found flint weapons, of the same type
as those of Amiens, in a freshwater formation in Suffolk, in conjunction
with elephant remains; and nearly a hundred years earlier (1715),
another tool of the same kind had been exhumed from the gravel of
London, together with bones of an elephant; to all which examples I
shall allude more fully in the sequel.
I may conclude this chapter by quoting a saying of Professor Agassiz,
"that whenever a new and startling fact is brought to light in science,
people first say, 'it is not true,' then that 'it is contrary to
religion,' and lastly, 'that everybody knew it before.'"
If I were considering merely the cultivators of geology, I should say
that the doctrine of the former co-existence of Man with many extinct
mammalia had already gone through these three phases in the progress
of every scientific truth towards acceptance. But the grounds of this
belief have not yet been fully laid before the general public, so as
to enable them fairly to weigh and appreciate the evidence. I shall
therefore do my best in the next three chapters to accomplish this task.