PLEISTOCENE PERIOD.
Flint Implements in Cave containing Hyaena and other extinct
Mammalia in Somersetshire.
Caves of the Gower Peninsula in South Wales.
Rhinoceros hemitoechus.
Ossiferous Caves near Palermo.
Sicily once part of Africa.
Rise of Bed of the Mediterranean to the Height of three hundred
Feet in the Human Period in Sardinia.
Burial-place of Pleistocene Date of Aurignac in the South of France.
Rhinoceros tichorhinus eaten by Man.
M. Lartet on extinct Mammalia and Works of Art found in the
Aurignac Cave.
Relative Antiquity of the same considered.
WORKS OF ART ASSOCIATED WITH EXTINCT MAMMALIA IN A CAVERN IN
SOMERSETSHIRE.
The only British cave from which implements resembling those of Amiens
have been obtained, since the attention of geologists has been awakened
to the importance of minutely observing the position of such relics
relatively to the associated fossil mammalia, is that recently opened
near Wells in Somersetshire. It occurs near the cave of Wookey Hole,
from the mouth of which the river Axe issues on the southern flanks of
the Mendips. No one had suspected that on the left side of the ravine,
through which the river flows after escaping from its subterranean
channel, there were other caves and fissures concealed beneath the green
sward of the steep sloping bank. About ten years ago, a canal was made,
several hundred yards in length, for the purpose of leading the waters
of the Axe to a paper-mill, now occupying the middle of the ravine. In
carrying out this work, about 12 feet of the left bank was cut away,
and a cavernous fissure, choked up to the roof with ossiferous loam, was
then, for the first time, exposed to view. This great cavity, originally
9 feet high and 36 wide, traversed the Dolomitic Conglomerate; and
fragments of that rock, some angular and others water-worn, were
scattered through the red mud of the cave, in which fossil remains were
abundant. For an account of them and the position they occupied we are
indebted to Mr. Dawkins, F.G.S., who, in company with Mr. Williamson,
explored the cavern in 1859, and obtained from it the bones of the
Hyaena spelaea in such numbers as to lead him to conclude that the
cavern had for a long time been a hyaena's den. Among the accompanying
animals found fossil in the same bone-earth, were observed Elephas
primigenius, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, Ursus spelaeus, Bos primigenius,
Megaceros hibernicus, Cervus tarandus (and other species of Cervus),
Felis spelaea, Canis lupus, Canis vulpes, and teeth and bones of the
genus Equus in great numbers.
Intermixed with the above fossil bones were some arrowheads, made of
bone, and many chipped flints, and chipped pieces of chert, a white or
bleached flint weapon of the spearhead Amiens type, which was taken out
of the undisturbed matrix by Mr. Williamson himself, together with a
hyaena's tooth, showing that Man had either been contemporaneous with
or had preceded the extinct fauna. After penetrating 34 feet from the
entrance, Mr. Dawkins found the cave bifurcating into two branches, one
of which was vertical. By this rent, perhaps, some part of the contents
of the cave may have been introduced.*
(* Boyd Dawkins, "Proceedings of the Geological Society"
January 1862.)
When I examined the spot in 1860, after I had been shown some remains of
the hyaena collected there, I felt convinced that a complete revolution
must have taken place in the topography of the district since the time
of the extinct quadrupeds. I was not aware at the time that flint tools
had been met with in the same bone-deposit.
CAVES OF GOWER IN GLAMORGANSHIRE, SOUTH WALES.
The ossiferous caves of the peninsula of Gower in Glamorganshire
have been diligently explored of late years by Dr. Falconer and
Lieutenant-Colonel E.R. Wood, who have thoroughly investigated the
contents of many which were previously unknown. Among these Dr.
Falconer's skilled eye has recognised the remains of almost every
quadruped which he had elsewhere found fossil in British caves: in some
places the Elephas primigenius, accompanied by its usual companion,
the Rhinoceros tichorhinus, in others Elephas antiquus, associated
with Rhinoceros hemitoechus, Falconer; the extinct animals being often
embedded, as in the Belgian caves, in the same matrix with species now
living in Europe, such as the common badger (Meles taxus), the common
wolf, and the fox.
In a cavernous fissure called the Raven's Cliff, teeth of several
individuals of Hippopotamus major, both young and old, were found; and
this in a district where there is now scarce a rill of running water,
much less a river in which such quadrupeds could swim. In one of the
caves, called Spritsail Tor, bones of the elephants above named were
observed, with a great many other quadrupeds of Recent and extinct
species.
From one fissure, called Bosco's Den, no less than one thousand antlers
of the reindeer, chiefly of the variety called Cervus Guettardi, were
extracted by the persevering exertions of Colonel Wood, who estimated
that several hundred more still remained in the bone-earth of the same
rent.
They were mostly shed horns, and of young animals; and had been washed
into the rent with other bones, and with angular fragments of limestone,
and all enveloped in the same ochreous mud. Among the other bones, which
were not numerous, were those of the cave-bear, wolf, fox, ox, stag, and
field-mouse.
But the discovery of most importance, as bearing on the subject of the
present work, is the occurrence in a newly-discovered cave, called
Long Hole, by Colonel Wood, in 1861, of the remains of two species
of rhinoceros, R. tichorhinus and R. hemitoechus, Falconer, in an
undisturbed deposit, in the lower part of which were some well-shaped
flint knives, evidently of human workmanship. It is clear from their
position that Man was coeval with these two species. We have elsewhere
independent proofs of his co-existence with every other species of the
cave-fauna of Glamorganshire; but this is the first well-authenticated
example of the occurrence of R. hemitoechus in connection with human
implements.
In the fossil fauna of the valley of the Thames, Rhinoceros leptorhinus
was mentioned as occurring at Gray's Thurrock with Elephas antiquus.
Dr. Falconer, in a memoir which he is now preparing for the press on the
European Pliocene and Pleistocene species of the genus Rhinoceros,
has shown that, under the above name of R. leptorhinus, three
distinct species have been confounded by Cuvier, Owen, and other
palaeontologists:--
1. R. megarhinus, Christol, being the original and typical R.
leptorhinus of Cuvier, founded on Cortesi's Monte Zago cranium, and the
ONLY Pliocene, or Pleistocene European species, that had not a nasal
septum.--Gray's Thurrock, etc.
2. R. hemitoechus, Falconer, in which the ossification of the septum
dividing the nostrils is incomplete in the middle, besides other cranial
and dental characters distinguishing it from R. tichorhinus, accompanies
Elephas antiquus in most of the oldest British bone-caves, such
as Kirkdale, Cefn, Durdham Down, Minchin Hole, and other Gower
caverns--also found at Clacton, in Essex, and in Northamptonshire.
3. R. etruscus, Falconer, a comparatively slight and slender form, also
with an incomplete bony septum,* occurs deep in the Val d'Arno deposits,
and in the "Forest bed," and superimposed blue clays, with lignite, of
the Norfolk coast, but nowhere as yet found in the ossiferous caves in
Britain.
(* Falconer, "Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society"
volume 15 1859 page 602.)
Dr. Falconer announced in 1860 his opinion that the filling up of the
Gower caves in South Wales took place after the deposition of the marine
boulder clay,* an opinion in harmony with what we have since learnt from
the section of the gravels near Bedford, given above (Figure 23), where
a fauna corresponding to that of the Welsh caves characterises the
ancient alluvium, and is shown to be clearly post-glacial, in the sense
of being posterior in date to the boulder-clay of the midland counties.
(* Ibid. volume 16 1860 page 491.)
In the same sense the late Edward Forbes declared, in 1846, his
conviction that not only the Cervus megaceros, but also the mammoth
and other extinct pachyderms and carnivora, had lived in Britain in
post-glacial times.*
(* "Memoir of the Geological Survey" pages 394 to 397.)
The Gower caves in general have their floors strewed over with sand,
containing marine shells, all of living species; and there are raised
beaches on the adjoining coast, and other geological signs of great
alteration in the relative level of land and sea, since that country was
inhabited by the extinct mammalia, some of which, as we have seen, were
certainly coeval with Man.
OSSIFEROUS CAVES IN THE NORTH OF SICILY.
Geologists have long been familiar with the fact that on the northern
coast of Sicily, between Termini on the east, and Trapani on the west,
there are several caves containing the bones of extinct animals. These
caves are situated in rocks of Hippurite limestone, a member of the
Cretaceous series, and some of them may be seen on both sides of the Bay
of Palermo. If in the neighbourhood of that city we proceed from the
sea inland, ascending a sloping terrace, composed of the marine Newer
Pliocene strata, we reach about a mile from the shore, and at the height
of about 180 feet above it a precipice of limestone, at the base of
which appear the entrances of several caves. In that of San Ciro, on
the east side of the bay, we find at the bottom sand with marine shells,
forty species of which have been examined, and found almost all to agree
specifically with mollusca now inhabiting the Mediterranean. Higher in
position, and resting on the sand, is a breccia, composed of pieces of
limestone, quartz, and schist in a matrix of brown marl, through
which land shells are dispersed, together with bones of two species
of hippopotamus, as determined by Dr. Falconer. Certain bones of the
skeleton were counted in such numbers as to prove that they must have
belonged to several hundred individuals. With these were associated the
remains of Elephas antiquus, and bones of the genera Bos, Cervus, Sus,
Ursus, Canis, and a large Felis. Some of these bones have been rolled
as if partially subjected to the action of water, and may have been
introduced by streams through rents in the Hippurite limestone; but
there is now no running water in the neighbourhood, no river such as
the hippopotamus might frequent, not even a small brook, so that the
physical geography of the district must have been altogether changed
since the time when such remains were swept into fissures, or into the
channels of engulfed rivers.
No proofs seem yet to have been found of the existence of Man at the
period when the hippopotamus and Elephas antiquus flourished at San
Ciro. But there is another cave called the Grotto di Maccagnone, which
much resembles it in geological position, on the opposite or west side
of the Bay of Palermo, near Carini. In the bottom of this cave a bone
deposit like that of San Ciro occurs, and above it other materials
reaching to the roof, and evidently washed in from above, through
crevices in the limestone. In this upper and newer breccia Dr. Falconer
discovered flint knives, bone splinters, bits of charcoal, burnt clay,
and other objects indicating human intervention, mingled with entire
land shells, teeth of horses, coprolites of hyaenas, and other
bones, the whole agglutinated to one another and to the roof by the
infiltration of water holding lime in solution. The perfect condition
of the large fragile helices (Helix vermiculata) afforded satisfactory
evidence, says Dr. Falconer, that the various articles were carried
into the cave by the tranquil agency of water, and not by any tumultuous
action. At a subsequent period other geographical changes took place,
so that the cave, after it had been filled, was washed out again, or
emptied of its contents with the exception of those patches of breccia
which, being cemented together by stalactite, still adhere to the roof.*
(* "Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society" volume 16
1860 page 105.)
Baron Anca, following up these investigations, explored, in 1859,
another cave at Mondello, west of Palermo, and north of Mount Gallo,
where he discovered molars of the living African elephant, and
afterwards additional specimens of the same species in the neighbouring
grotto of Olivella. In reference to this elephant, Dr. Falconer has
reminded us that the distance between the nearest part of Sicily and
the coast of Africa, between Marsala and Cape Bon, is not more than 80
miles, and Admiral Smyth, in his Memoir on the Mediterranean, states
(page 499) that there is a subaqueous plateau, named by him Adventure
Bank, uniting Sicily to Africa by a succession of ridges which are not
more than from 40 to 50 fathoms under water.*
(* Cited by Horner, "Presidential Address to the Geological
Society" 1861 page 42.)
Sicily therefore might be re-united to Africa by movements of upheaval
not greater than those which are already known to have taken place
within the human period on the borders of the Mediterranean, of which
I shall now proceed to cite a well-authenticated example, observed in
Sardinia.
RISE OF THE BED OF THE SEA TO THE HEIGHT OF 300 FEET, IN THE HUMAN
PERIOD, IN SARDINIA.
Count Albert de la Marmora, in his description of the geology of
Sardinia,* has shown that on the southern coast of that island, at
Cagliari and in the neighbourhood, an ancient bed of the sea, containing
marine shells of living species, and numerous fragments of antique
pottery, has been elevated to the height of from 230 to 324 feet above
the present level of the Mediterranean.
(* "Partie Geologique" volume 1 pages 382 and 387.)
Oysters and other shells, of which a careful list has been published,
including the common mussel (Mytilus edulis), many of them having
both valves united, occur, embedded in a breccia in which fragments of
limestone abound. The mussels are often in such numbers as to impart,
when they have decomposed, a violet colour to the marine stratum.
Besides pieces of coarse pottery, a flattened ball of baked earthenware,
with a hole through its axis, was found in the midst of the marine
shells. It is supposed to have been used for weighting a fishing net. Of
this and of one of the fragments of ancient pottery Count de la Marmora
has given figures.
The upraised bed of the sea probably belongs in this instance to the
Pleistocene period, for in a bone breccia, filling fissures in the rocks
around Cagliari, the remains of extinct mammalia have been detected;
among which is a new genus of carnivorous quadruped, named Cynotherium
by M. Studiati, and figured by Count de la Marmora in his Atlas (Plate
7), also an extinct species of Lagomys, determined by Cuvier in 1825.
Embedded in the same bone-breccia, and enveloped with red earth like
the mammalian remains, were detected shells of the Mytilus edulis before
mentioned, implying that the marine formation containing shells and
pottery had been already upheaved and exposed to denudation before the
remains of quadrupeds were washed into these rents and included in the
red earth. In the vegetable soil covering the upraised marine stratum,
fragments of Roman pottery occur.
If we assume the average rate of upheaval to have been, as before
hinted, 2 1/2 feet in a century, 300 feet would give an antiquity of
12,000 years to the Cagliari pottery, even if we simply confine our
estimate to the upheaval above the sea-level, without allowing for
the original depth of water in which the mollusca lived. Even then our
calculation would merely embrace the period during which the upward
movement was going on; and we can form at present no conjecture as to
the probable era of its commencement or termination.
I learn from Captain Spratt, R.N., that the island of Crete or Candia,
about 135 miles in length, has been raised at its western extremity
about 25 feet; so that ancient ports are now high and dry above the sea,
while at its eastern end it has sunk so much that the ruins of old towns
are seen under water. Revolutions like these in the physical geography
of the countries bordering the Mediterranean, may well help us to
understand the phenomena of the Palermo caves, and the presence in
Sicily of African species of mammalia.
CLIMATE AND HABITS OF THE HIPPOPOTAMUS.
As I have alluded more than once in this chapter to the occurrence of
the remains of the hippopotamus in places where there are now no rivers,
not even a rill of water, and as other bones of the same genus have been
met with in the lower-level gravels of the Somme where large blocks
of sandstone seem to imply that ice once played a part in their
transportation, it may be well to consider, before proceeding farther,
what geographical and climatal conditions are indicated by the presence
of these fossil pachyderms.
It is now very generally conceded that the mammoth and tichorhine
rhinoceros were fitted to inhabit northern regions, and it is therefore
natural to begin by asking whether the extinct hippopotamus may not
in like manner have flourished in a cold climate. In answer to this
inquiry, it has been remarked that the living hippopotami, anatomically
speaking so closely allied to the extinct species, are so aquatic and
fluviatile in their habits as to make it difficult to conceive that
their congeners could have thriven all the year round in regions where,
during winter, the rivers were frozen over for months. Moreover, I have
been unable to learn that, in any instance, bones of the hippopotamus
have been found in the drift of northern Germany associated with the
remains of the mammoth, tichorhine rhinoceros, musk-ox, reindeer,
lemming, and other arctic quadrupeds before alluded to; yet, though not
proved to have ever made a part of such a fauna, the presence of the
fossil hippopotamus north of the fiftieth parallel of latitude naturally
tempts us to speculate on the migratory powers and instincts of some
of the extinct species of the genus. They may have resembled, in this
respect, the living musk-ox, herds of which pass for hundreds of miles
over the ice to the rich pastures of Melville Island, and then return
again to southern latitudes before the ice breaks up.
We are indebted to Sir Andrew Smith,* an experienced zoologist, for
having given us an account of the migratory habits of the living
hippopotamus of Southern Africa (H. amphibius, Linn.).
(* "Illustrations of the Zoology of South Africa": article
"Hippopotamus.")
He states that, when the Dutch first colonised the Cape of Good Hope,
this animal abounded in all the great rivers, as far south as the
land extends; whereas, in 1849, they had all disappeared, scarcely one
remaining even within a moderate distance of the colony. He also tells
us that this species evinces great sagacity in changing its quarters
whenever danger threatens, quitting every district invaded by settlers
bearing fire-arms. Bulky as they are, they can travel speedily for miles
over land from one pool of a dried-up river to another; but it is by
water that their powers of locomotion are surpassingly great, not only
in rivers, but in the sea, for they are far from confining themselves to
fresh water. Indeed, Sir A. Smith finds it "difficult to decide whether,
during the daytime and when not feeding, they prefer the pools of rivers
or the waters of the ocean for their abode." In districts where they
have been disturbed by Man, they feed almost entirely in the night,
chiefly on certain kinds of grass, but also on brushwood. Sir A. Smith
relates that, in an expedition which he made north of Port Natal, he
found them swarming in all the rivers about the tropic of Capricorn.
Here they were often seen to have left their footprints on the sands,
entering or coming out of the salt water; and on one occasion Smith's
party tried in vain to intercept a female with her young as she was
making her way to the sea. Another female, which they had wounded on her
precipitate retreat to the sea, was afterwards shot in that element.
The geologist, therefore, may freely speculate on the time when herds of
hippopotami issued from North African rivers, such as the Nile, and
swam northwards in summer along the coasts of the Mediterranean, or even
occasionally visited islands near the shore. Here and there they
may have landed to graze or browse, tarrying awhile and afterwards
continuing their course northwards. Others may have swum in a few summer
days from rivers in the south of Spain or France to the Somme, Thames,
or Severn, making timely retreat to the south before the snow and ice
set in.
BURIAL-PLACE AT AURIGNAC, IN THE SOUTH OF FRANCE, OF PLEISTOCENE DATE.
I have alluded in the beginning of the fourth chapter to a custom
prevalent among rude nations of consigning to the tomb works of art,
once the property of the dead, or objects of their affection, and even
of storing up, in many cases, animal food destined for the manes of the
defunct in a future life. I also cited M. Desnoyers' comments on the
absence among the bones of wild and domestic animals found in old
Gaulish tombs of all intermixture of extinct species of quadrupeds, as
proving that the oldest sepulchral monuments then known in France (1845)
had no claims to high antiquity founded on palaeontological data.
M. Lartet, however, has recently published a circumstantial account of
what seems clearly to have been a sepulchral vault of the Pleistocene
period, near Aurignac, not far from the foot of the Pyrenees. I have had
the advantage of inspecting the fossil bones and works of art obtained
by him from that grotto, and of conversing and corresponding with him
on the subject, and can see no grounds for doubting the soundness of his
conclusions.*
(* See Lartet, "Annales des Sci. Nat." 4mo. Ser. Zoologie
volume 15 page 177 translated in "Natural History Review"
London January 1862.)
[Illustration: Figure 25. Hill of Fajoles]
(FIGURE 25. SECTION OF PART OF THE HILL OF FAJOLES PASSING THROUGH
THE SEPULCHRAL GROTTO OF AURIGNAC (E. Lartet).
a. Part of the vault in which the remains of seventeen human
skeletons were found.
b. Layer of made ground, two feet thick, inside the grotto in
which a few human bones, with entire bones of extinct and
living species of animals, and many works of art were embedded.
c. Layers of ashes and charcoal, six inches thick, with broken,
burnt, and gnawed bones of extinct and Recent mammalia; also
hearth-stones and works of art; no human bones.
d. Deposit with similar contents and a few scattered cinders.
e. Talus of rubbish washed down from the hill above.
f, g. Slab of rock which closed the vault, not ascertained
whether it extended to h.
f i. Rabbit burrow which led to the discovery of the grotto.
h, k. Original terrace on which the grotto opened.
N. Nummulitic limestone of hill of Fajoles.)
The town of Aurignac is situated in the department of the Haute-Garonne,
near a spur of the Pyrenees; adjoining it is the small flat-topped hill
of Fajoles, about 60 feet above the brook called Rodes, which flows at
its foot on one side. It consists of Nummulitic limestone, presenting
a steep escarpment towards the north-west, on which side in the face of
the rock, about 45 feet above the brook, is now visible the entrance of
a grotto a, Figure 25, which opened originally on the terrace h, c, k,
which slopes gently towards the valley.
Until the year 1852, the opening into this grotto was masked by a talus
of small fragments of limestone and earthy matter e, such as the rain
may have washed down the slope of the hill. In that year a labourer
named Bonnemaison, employed in repairing the roads, observed that
rabbits, when hotly pursued by the sportsman, ran into a hole which they
had burrowed in the talus, at i f, Figure 25. On reaching as far into
the opening as the length of his arm, he drew out, to his surprise,
one of the long bones of the human skeleton; and his curiosity being
excited, and having a suspicion that the hole communicated with a
subterranean cavity, he commenced digging a trench through the middle of
the talus, and in a few hours found himself opposite a large heavy slab
of rock f h, placed vertically against the entrance. Having removed
this, he discovered on the other side of it an arched cavity a, 7 or 8
feet in its greatest height, 10 in width, and 7 in horizontal depth. It
was almost filled with bones, among which were two entire skulls, which
he recognised at once as human. The people of Aurignac, astonished to
hear of the occurrence of so many human relics in so lonely a spot,
flocked to the cave, and Dr. Amiel, the Mayor, ordered all the bones to
be taken out and reinterred in the parish cemetery. But before this was
done, having as a medical man a knowledge of anatomy, he ascertained
by counting the homologous bones that they must have formed parts of no
less than seventeen skeletons of both sexes, and all ages; some so young
that the ossification of some of the bones was incomplete. Unfortunately
the skulls were injured in the transfer; and what is worse, after the
lapse of eight years, when M. Lartet visited Aurignac, the village
sexton was unable to tell him in what exact place the trench was dug,
into which the skeletons had been thrown, so that this rich harvest
of ethnological knowledge seems for ever lost to the antiquary and
geologist.
M. Lartet having been shown, in 1860, the remains of some extinct
animals and works of art, found in digging the original trench made by
Bonnemaison through the bed d under the talus, and some others
brought out from the interior of the grotto, determined to investigate
systematically what remained intact of the deposits outside and inside
the vault, those inside, underlying the human skeletons, being supposed
to consist entirely of made ground. Having obtained the assistance of
some intelligent workmen, he personally superintended their labours, and
found outside the grotto, resting on the sloping terrace h k, the layer
of ashes and charcoal c, about 6 inches thick, extending over an area of
6 or 7 square yards, and going as far as the entrance of the grotto and
no farther, there being no cinders or charcoal in the interior. Among
the cinders outside the vault were fragments of fissile sandstone,
reddened by heat, which were observed to rest on a levelled surface of
Nummulitic limestone and to have formed a hearth. The nearest place from
whence such slabs of sandstone could have been brought was the opposite
side of the valley.
Among the ashes, and in some overlying earthy layers, d, separating the
ashes from the talus e, were a great variety of bones and implements;
amongst the latter not fewer than a hundred flint articles--knives,
projectiles, sling stones, and chips, and among them one of those
siliceous cores or nuclei with numerous facets, from which flint flakes
or knives had been struck off, seeming to prove that some instruments
were occasionally manufactured on the very spot.
Among other articles outside the entrance was found a stone of a
circular form, and flattened on two sides, with a central depression,
composed of a tough rock which does not belong to that region of the
Pyrenees. This instrument is supposed by the Danish antiquaries to have
been used for removing by skilful blows the edges of flint knives, the
fingers and thumb being placed in the two opposite depressions during
the operation. Among the bone instruments were arrows without barbs, and
other tools made of reindeer horn, and a bodkin formed out of the
more compact horn of the roedeer. This instrument was well shaped, and
sharply pointed, and in so good a state of preservation that it might
still be used for piercing the tough skins of animals.
Scattered through the same ashes and earth were the bones of the various
species of animals enumerated in the subjoined lists, with the exception
of two, marked with an asterisk, which only occurred in the interior of
the grotto:--
TABLE 10/1. NUMBERS OF INDIVIDUALS, BONES OF WHICH WERE FOUND IN THE
AURIGNAC CAVE.
COLUMN 1: NAME OF SPECIES.
COLUMN 2: NUMBER OF INDIVIDUALS.
1. CARNIVORA
1. Ursus spelaeus (cave-bear): 5 to 6.
2. Ursus arctos? (brown bear): 1.
3. Meles taxus (badger): 1 to 2.
4. Putorius vulgaris (polecat): 1.
5. *Felis spelaea (cave-lion): 1.
6. Felis catus ferus (wild cat): 1.
7. Hyaena spelaea (cave-hyaena): 5 to 6.
8. Canis lupus (wolf): 3.
9. Canis vulpes (fox): 18 to 20.
2. HERBIVORA.
1. Elephas primigenius (mammoth, two molars).
2. Rhinoceros tichorhinus (Siberian rhinoceros): 1.
3. Equus caballus (horse): 12 to 15.
4. Equus asinus (?) (ass): 1.
5. *Sus scrofa (pig, two incisors).
6. Cervus elaphus (stag): 1.
7. Megaceros hibernicus (gigantic Irish deer): 1.
8. C. capreolus (roebuck): 3 to 4.
9. C. tarandus (reindeer): 10 to 12.
10. Bison europaeus (aurochs): 12 to 15.
The bones of the herbivora were the most numerous, and all those on the
outside of the grotto which had contained marrow were invariably split
open, as if for its extraction, many of them being also burnt. The
spongy parts, moreover, were wanting, having been eaten off and gnawed
after they were broken, the work, according to M. Lartet, of hyaenas,
the bones and coprolites of which were mixed with the cinders, and
dispersed through the overlying soil d. These beasts of prey are
supposed to have prowled about the spot and fed on such relics of the
funeral feasts as remained after the retreat of the human visitors,
or during the intervals between successive funeral ceremonies which
accompanied the interment of the corpses within the sepulchre. Many of
the bones were also streaked, as if the flesh had been scraped off by a
flint instrument.
Among the various proofs that the bones were fresh when brought to the
spot, it is remarked that those of the herbivora not only bore the marks
of having had the marrow extracted and having afterwards been gnawed
and in part devoured as if by carnivorous beasts, but that they had also
been acted upon by fire (and this was especially noticed in one case of
a cave-bear's bone), in such a manner as to show that they retained in
them at the time all their animal matter.
Among other quadrupeds which appear to have been eaten at the funeral
feasts, and of which the bones occurred among the ashes, were those of a
young Rhinoceros tichorhinus, the bones of which had been, like those of
the accompanying herbivora, broken and gnawed by a beast of prey at both
extremities.
Outside of the great slab of stone forming the door, not one human bone
occurred; inside of it there were found, mixed with loose soil, the
remains of as many as seventeen human individuals, besides some works
of art and bones of animals. We know nothing of the arrangement of these
bones when they were first broken into. M. Lartet inferred at first that
the bodies were bent down upon themselves in a squatting attitude,
a posture known to have been adopted in most of the sepulchres of
primitive times; and he has so represented them in his restoration of
the cave: but this opinion he has since retracted. His artist also has
inadvertently, in the same drawing, delineated the arched grotto as if
it were shaped very regularly and smoothly, like a finished piece of
masonry, whereas the surface was in truth as uneven and irregular as are
the roofs of all natural grottos.
There was no stalagmite in the grotto, and M. Lartet, an experienced
investigator of ossiferous caverns in the south of France, came to
the conclusion that all the bones and soil found in the inside were
artificially introduced. The substratum b, Figure 25, which remained
after the skeletons had been removed, was about 2 feet thick. In it were
found about ten detached human bones, including a molar tooth; and M.
Delesse ascertained by careful analysis of one of these, as well as of
the bones of a rhinoceros, bear, and some other extinct animals, that
they all contained precisely the same proportion of nitrogen, or had
lost an equal amount of their animal matter. My friend Mr. Evans, before
cited, has suggested to me that such a fact, taken alone, may not be
conclusive in favour of the equal antiquity of the human and other
remains. No doubt, had the human skeletons been found to contain more
gelatine than those of the extinct mammalia, it would have shown that
they were the more modern of the two; but it is possible that after a
bone has gone on losing its animal matter up to a certain point, it may
then part with no more so long as it continues enveloped in the same
matrix. If this be so, it follows that bones of very different degrees
of antiquity, after they have lain for many thousands of years in
a particular soil, may all have reached long ago the maximum of
decomposition attainable in such a matrix. In the present case, however,
the proof of the contemporaneousness of Man and the extinct animals
does not depend simply on the identity of their mineral condition. The
chemical analysis of M. Delesse is only a fact in corroboration of a
great mass of other evidence.
Mixed with the human bones inside the grotto first removed by
Bonnemaison, were eighteen small, round, and flat plates of a white
shelly substance, made of some species of cockle (Cardium), pierced
through the middle as if for being strung into a bracelet. In the
substratum also in the interior examined by M. Lartet was found the tusk
of a young Ursus spelaeus, the crown of which had been stripped of its
enamel, and which had been carved perhaps in imitation of the head of a
bird. It was perforated lengthwise as if for suspension as an ornament
or amulet. A flint knife also was found in the interior which had
evidently never been used; in this respect, unlike the numerous worn
specimens found outside, so that it is conjectured that it may, like
other associated works of art, have been placed there as part of the
funeral ceremonies.
A few teeth of the cave-lion, Felis spelaea, and two tusks of the wild
boar, also found in the interior, were memorials perhaps of the chase.
No remains of the same animals were met with among the external relics.
On the whole, the bones of animals inside the vault offer a remarkable
contrast to those of the exterior, being all entire and uninjured, none
of them broken, gnawed, half-eaten, scraped, or burnt like those lying
among the ashes on the other side of the great slab which formed the
portal. The bones of the interior seem to have been clothed with their
flesh when buried in the layer of loose soil strewed over the floor.
In confirmation of this idea, many bones of the skeleton were often
observed to be in juxtaposition, and in one spot all the bones of the
leg of an Ursus spelaeus were lying together uninjured. Add to this,
the entire absence in the interior of cinders and charcoal, and we
can scarcely doubt that we have here an example of an ancient place of
sepulture, closed at the opening so effectually against the hyaenas or
other carnivora that no marks of their teeth appear on any of the bones,
whether human or brute.
John Carver, in his travels in the interior of North America in a
1766-68 (chapter 15.), gave a minute account of the funeral rites of
an Indian tribe which inhabited the country now called Iowa, at the
junction of the St. Peter's River with the Mississippi; and Schiller,
in his famous "Nadowessische Todtenklage," has faithfully embodied in
a poetic dirge all the characteristic features of the ceremonies so
graphically described by the English traveller, not omitting the many
funeral gifts which, we are told, were placed "in a cave" with the
bodies of the dead. The lines beginning, "Bringet her die letzten
Gaben," have been thus translated, truthfully, and with all the spirit
of the original, by Sir E. L. Bulwer*:--
"Here bring the last gifts!--and with these
The last lament be said;
Let all that pleased, and yet may please,
Be buried with the dead.
"Beneath his head the hatchet hide,
That he so stoutly swung;
And place the bear's fat haunch beside--
The journey hence is long!
"And let the knife new sharpened be
That on the battle-day
Shore with quick strokes--he took but three--
The foeman's scalp away!
"The paints that warriors love to use,
Place here within his hand,
That he may shine with ruddy hues
Amidst the spirit-land."
(* "Poems and Ballads of Schiller.")
If we accept M. Lartet's interpretation of the ossiferous deposits of
Aurignac, both inside and outside the grotto, they add nothing to the
palaeontological evidence in favour of Man's antiquity, for we have seen
all the same mammalia associated elsewhere with flint implements, and
some species, such as the Elephas antiquus, Rhinoceros hemitoechus, and
Hippopotamus major, missing here, have been met with in other places. An
argument, however, having an opposite leaning may perhaps be founded on
the phenomena of Aurignac. It may--indeed it has been said, that they
imply that some of the extinct mammalia survived nearly to our times:
First--Because of the modern style of the works of art at Aurignac.
Secondly--Because of the absence of any signs of change in the physical
geography of the country since the cave was used for a place of
sepulture.
In reference to the first of these propositions, the utensils, it is
said, of bone and stone indicate a more advanced state of the arts than
the flint implements of Abbeville and Amiens. M. Lartet, however, is
of opinion that they do not, and thinks that we have no right to assume
that the fabricators of the various spear-headed and other tools of
the Valley of the Somme possessed no bone instruments or ornaments
resembling those discovered at Aurignac. These last, moreover, he
regards as extremely rude in comparison with others of the stone period
in France, which can be proved palaeontologically, at least by strong
negative evidence, to be of subsequent date. Thus, for example, at
Savigne, near Civray, in the department of Vienne, there is a cave in
which there are no extinct mammalia, but where remains of the reindeer
abound. The works of art of the stone period found there indicate
considerable progress in skill beyond that attested by the objects found
in the Aurignac grotto. Among the Savigne articles, there is the bone of
a stag, on which figures of two animals, apparently meant for deer, are
engraved in outline, as if by a sharp-pointed flint. In another cave,
that of Massat, in the department of Ariege, which M. Lartet ascribes
to the period of the aurochs, a quadruped which survived the reindeer in
the south of France, there are bone instruments of a still more advanced
state of the arts, as, for example, barbed arrows with a small canal in
each, believed to have served for the insertion of poison; also a needle
of bird's bone, finely shaped, with an eye or perforation at one end,
and a stag's horn, on which is carved a representation of a bear's head,
and a hole at one end as if for suspending it. In this figure we see,
says M. Lartet, what may perhaps be the earliest known example of lines
used to express shading.
The fauna of the aurochs (Bison europaeus) agrees with that of the
earlier lake dwellings in Switzerland, in which hitherto the reindeer
is wanting; whereas the reindeer has been found in a Swiss cave, in Mont
Saleve, supposed by Lartet to be more ancient than the lake dwellings.
According to this view, the mammalian fauna has undergone at least two
fluctuations since the remains of some extinct quadrupeds were eaten,
and others buried as funeral gifts in the sepulchral vault of Aurignac.
As to the absence of any marked changes in the physical configuration
of the district since the same grotto was a place of sepulture, we
must remember that it is the normal state of the earth's surface to be
undergoing great alterations in one place, while other areas, often
in close proximity, remain for ages without any modification. In one
region, rivers are deepening and widening their channels, or the waves
of the sea are undermining cliffs, or the land is sinking beneath
or rising above the waters, century after century, or the volcano is
pouring forth torrents of lava or showers of ashes; while, in tracts
hard by, the ancient forest, or extensive heath, or the splendid city
continue scatheless and motionless. Had the talus which concealed from
view the ancient hearth with its cinders and the massive stone portal
of the Aurignac grotto escaped all human interference for thousands of
years to come, there is no reason to suppose that the small stream at
the foot of the hill of Fajoles would have undermined it. At the end of
a long period the only alteration might have been the thickening of the
talus which protected the loose cinders and bones from waste. We behold
in many a valley of Auvergne, within 50 feet of the present river
channel, a volcanic cone of loose ashes, with a crater at its summit,
from which powerful currents of basaltic lava have poured, usurping the
ancient bed of the torrent. By the action of the stream, in the course
of ages, vast masses of the hard columnar basalt have been removed,
pillar after pillar, and much vesicular lava, as in the case, for
example, of the Puy Rouge, near Chalucet, and of the Puy de Tartaret,
near Nechers.*
(* Scrope's "Volcanoes of Central France" 1858 page 97.)
The rivers have even in some cases, as the Sioule, near Chalucet, cut
through not only the basalt which dispossessed them of their ancient
channels, but have actually eaten 50 feet into the subjacent gneiss; yet
the cone, an incoherent heap of scoriae and spongy ejectamenta, stands
unmolested. Had the waters once risen, even for a day, so high as to
reach the level of the base of one of these cones--had there been a
single flood 50 or 60 feet in height since the last eruption occurred,
a great part of these volcanoes must inevitably have been swept away
as readily as all traces of the layer of cinders; and the accompanying
bones would have been obliterated by the Rodes near Aurignac, had it
risen, since the days of the mammoth, rhinoceros, and cave-bear, 50 feet
above its present level.
The Aurignac cave adds no new species to the list of extinct quadrupeds,
which we have elsewhere, and by independent evidence, ascertained to
have once flourished contemporaneously with Man. But if the fossil
memorials have been correctly interpreted--if we have here before us at
the northern base of the Pyrenees a sepulchral vault with skeletons
of human beings, consigned by friends and relatives to their last
resting-place--if we have also at the portal of the tomb the relics of
funeral feasts, and within it indications of viands destined for the
use of the departed on their way to a land of spirits; while among
the funeral gifts are weapons wherewith in other fields to chase the
gigantic deer, the cave-lion, the cave-bear, and woolly rhinoceros--we
have at last succeeded in tracing back the sacred rites of burial,
and, more interesting still, a belief in a future state, to times long
anterior to those of history and tradition. Rude and superstitious
as may have been the savage of that remote era, he still deserved, by
cherishing hopes of a hereafter, the epithet of "noble," which Dryden
gave to what he seems to have pictured to himself as the primitive
condition of our race,
"as Nature first made Man
When wild in woods the noble savage ran."*
(* "Siege of Granada" Part 1 Act 1 Scene 1.)