CAVES USED IN THE AGES OF IRON AND OF BRONZE.
The Difference between Historic and Prehistoric Time.--The
Prehistoric Fauna.--The Archæological Classification.--Caves of
the Iron Age.--Caves of the Bronze Age in Britain.--The Caves
of Césareda in Portugal probably occupied by Cannibals.--The Cave
of Reggio in Apulia.
_The Difference between Historic and Prehistoric Time._
It will be necessary before we examine the group of caves used by man
in prehistoric times, to point out the important difference in the
measurement of time within and beyond the borders of history. When we
speak, for example, of the date of the Norman Conquest, we imply that
we can ascertain by historical records, not merely that it succeeded
the invasion of Britain by the English or Danes, and happened before
our own time, but that the interval which separates it from those
events can be accurately measured by the unit of years. If, however,
we attempt to ascertain the date of any event which happened outside
the historical limit, we shall find that it is a question solely
of relation. When we speak, for example, of the neolithic age, we
merely mean a certain stage of human progress which succeeded the
palæolithic, and preceded the bronze age, but we have no proof of
the length of the interval dividing it from the one or the other. The
historic “when?” implies “how long ago?” the prehistoric “when?” merely
implies a definition before and after certain events, without any idea
of the measurement of the intervals.
An attempt to ascertain the absolute date of prehistoric events must
of necessity fail, since it is based on the improbable assumption
that the physical agents have acted uniformly, and that therefore the
results may be used as a natural chronometer. The present rate of the
accumulation of _débris_, as at the Victoria Cave of the preceding
chapter, or of that of silt in the deltas of rivers, such as the Nile,
or the Tinière, may convey a rough idea of the high antiquity of
prehistoric deposits; but a slight change either of the climate, or of
the rainfall, would invalidate the conclusion. When the greater part
of Europe lay buried under forest, when Palestine supported a large
population, and when glaciers crowned some of the higher mountains of
Africa, such as the Atlas, the European and Egyptian climates were
probably moister than at the present time, and the rainfall and the
floods greater, and consequently the accumulation of sediment quicker
than the observed rate under the present conditions. And in the same
way all estimates of the lapse of past time, based upon the excavation
of a river valley, or the retrocession of a waterfall, such as Niagara,
lie open to the same kind of objection. It is not at all reasonable to
suppose that the complex conditions which regulate the present rate of
erosion, have been the same during the time the work has been done,
and it therefore follows that the work done is a measure of the power
employed, and not of the length of time during which it has been in
operation. We must, therefore, give up the idea of measuring the past
beyond the memory of man, as represented in historical documents, by
the historic unit of years. We can merely trace a definite sequence of
events, separated one from another by uncertain intervals. And for that
series of events which extends from the borders of history back to the
remote age where the geologist, descending the stream of time, meets
the archæologist, I have adopted the term prehistoric.[85]
_The Prehistoric Fauna._
The prehistoric period is characterized by the arrival of the domestic
animals in Europe, under the care of man. The dog, swine, horse,
horned-sheep, goat, _Bos longifrons_, and the larger ox descended from
an ancestor, according to Professor Rütimeyer, of the type of the great
Urus, make their appearance together, in association with the remains
of man, in the neolithic stage of civilization.[86] Subsequently they
spread over the whole of our continent, for the most part under the
care of man. The _Bos longifrons_, however, and possibly also the
Urus, reverted to feral conditions, just as the horses and oxen, in
the Americas and Australia, have done at the present time, and their
remains are therefore frequently found in association with animals
undoubtedly wild. The domestic horse, the variety of hog descended
from the wild boar, and the domestic cattle derived from the Urus, may
possibly have passed under the yoke of man, in Europe, since their
wild stocks were to be found in that area, both in the prehistoric
and pleistocene times. This, however, cannot be affirmed of the swine
descended from the southern variety of _Sus Indica_, or of the Celtic
shorthorn, of the sheep, or goat, since their wild ancestors were not
indigenous in Europe. These animals must have been domesticated in
some area outside Europe; and since central Asia is the region where
the wild stocks still exist, from which all the domestic animals are
descended, it is reasonable to suppose that they were domesticated
in that region, and thence introduced, by a race of shepherds and
herdsmen, into our quarter of the world.
This conclusion is considerably strengthened by the evidence which
Professor Heer has advanced, as to the vegetables used by the dwellers
on piles in the Swiss lakes, among which some, such as the two kinds of
millet, the six-rowed barley (hordeum hexastichon), the Egyptian wheat
(triticum turgidum), and a weed (Silene cretica), accidentally brought
along with them, are distinctively of southern derivation.
The most important wild animals living in this country during the
prehistoric period are the urus, the gigantic skulls of which occur
in the peat bogs of England and Scotland, the Irish elk, the moose
(_Cervus alces_), and the reindeer. The two last are far more abundant
in the north than in the south of Britain; their remains have been
discovered in the neighbourhood of London, those of both animals at
Walthamstow, and those of the latter at Crossness in Kent, on the banks
of the Thames. The remains of the bison have not been recorded from any
prehistoric deposit in this country.
The Irish elk is the only animal which has become extinct; while the
moose, or true elk, is the only wild species which has not been proved
to have been living in the preceding age. The stag was very abundant.
The prehistoric fauna is distinguished from that of the pleistocene
not merely by the appearance of the animals above mentioned, which
were hitherto unknown, but by the absence of many species which were
living during the latter period. The cave bear, woolly rhinoceros, and
mammoth, for example, became extinct, the musk-sheep and lemming were
banished from a temperate latitude to take refuge in the regions of the
north, while the spotted hyæna, the hippopotamus, and Felis caffer,
retired to the warm regions of Africa, where they are still living.
_The Archæological Classification._
The prehistoric period has been classified by the archæologists
according to the stages of human progress which it presents. At the
frontier of history, in each country, we find that the dwellers
were acquainted with the use of iron, and had found it to be the
most convenient material for the manufacture of cutting weapons and
implements. Before this the voice of tradition points out that bronze
was the only material used for these purposes, and stone before bronze.
These three stages of human culture, or the ages of iron, bronze, and
stone, have been fully verified by investigations which have been
made in various parts of Europe, into the prehistoric habitations and
burial-places of man.
This classification by no means implies an exact chronology, or that
any one of these ages, with the exception perhaps of the first, covered
the whole of Europe at the same point of time, but that the order in
which they followed each other is the same in each country which has
been explored. There is good reason for the belief, that at the time
the Egyptian and Assyrian empires were in the height of their glory,
Northern Europe was inhabited by rude polished-stone-using races. And
it is a well-ascertained fact, that while the inhabitants of Britain
and Scandinavia were in their bronze age, the Etruscans and Phœnicians
were in their full power in the south. It is obvious again, that, even
in the same country, the poorer classes must have been long content
to use the ruder and more common materials for their daily needs,
while the richer and more powerful used the rarer and more costly.
These three ages must therefore necessarily overlap. “Like the three
principal colours of the rainbow,” writes Mr. Evans,[87] “these three
stages of civilization overlap, intermingle, and shade off the one
into the other; and yet their succession, as far as Western Europe
is concerned, appears to be equally well defined with that of the
prismatic colours, though the proportions of the spectrum may vary in
different countries.” They cannot reasonably be viewed as hard and fast
lines of division, mapping off successive quantities of time.
The age of stone is subdivided by Sir John Lubbock into the neolithic
periods, or that in which polished stone was the only material used
for cutting, and the palæolithic, in which mankind had not learnt to
grind and polish his implements. The latter belongs to the pleistocene,
or quaternary period, since the palæolithic implements are found in
association with the remains of the animals characteristic of that age.
The prehistoric caves, therefore, may be divided into three classes
if the archæological method of analysis be employed: 1, into those
containing evidence of the use of iron; 2, those containing proof
of the knowledge of bronze; 3, and lastly, those in which traces of
polished stone weapons have been discovered unassociated with metals.
By the animal remains which they contain they may be distinguished
from those of the pleistocene age, both by the absence, as well as the
presence of certain species which have been enumerated.
From the archæological point of view, two out of the four ages are
still represented. Stone is, at the present time, the only material
used in the more remote regions of Australia, although it is fast being
replaced by iron, which has superseded bronze, and is spreading rapidly
over the whole earth. The group of historic caves described in the
preceding chapter may be said to belong to the iron age, that is to
say, to that later portion of it in which the events are recorded in
history.
The traces of the occupation of caves by man in the iron and bronze
ages are so extremely scarce, that it is certain that they were
but rarely used as habitations. Man had sufficiently advanced in
civilization in those times to construct artificial dwellings and tombs
for himself, instead of using the natural shelters which were so very
generally occupied in Europe by his ruder neolithic predecessors.
_Cave of the Iron Age._
In the course of the systematic exploration of caves in the Mendip
Hills, carried on by Messrs. Ayshford Sanford, Parker, and myself, a
cave was examined in Burrington Combe, near Wrington, in Somerset,
which may be referred to the iron age, and which we named Whitcombe’s
Hole. It opened upon the side of that magnificent combe, at a height
of about 135 feet from the bottom and fifteen from the top, and ran
horizontally inwards, the floor being formed of an accumulation of
earth mingled with charcoal, and containing numerous broken bones
and teeth. The latter belonged to the wolf, fox, badger, rabbit,
hare, stag, goat, and Celtic shorthorn. In the lower portion were the
fragments of a rude, unornamented urn of a coarse black ware, with the
rim turned at right angles, along with a bent piece of iron, which
bears a strong resemblance to those found strengthening the corners of
wooden coffins in the Gallo-Roman graves on the banks of the Somme. The
fractures of the bones, with one exception, were caused by the hand
of man, and not by the teeth of the carnivora. The position renders
the cave eminently fitted for concealment, for while commanding an
extensive view down the Combe, it is invisible both from above and
below, and opening on the face of an almost vertical cliff, it is
easily defended. If the urn be sepulchral, the interment must be of
a later date than the occupation, because it is made in the _débris_
which resulted from the latter.[88]
_Caves of the Bronze Age in Britain._
The cave of Heathery Burn,[89] near Stanhope, in Weardale, co. Durham,
is the only one in this country that has furnished a large series of
articles of the bronze age. It is described by Mr. Elliott as running
into the precipitous side of a ravine, at a height of about 10 to
12 feet above the level of the Stanhope Burn, and as being partially
traversed by water. Since its discovery in 1861, it has been altogether
destroyed by the removal of the stone to be used as a flux in smelting
the ore of the Weardale Iron Company, and an admirable section of its
contents was therefore visible from time to time. A stratum of sand at
the bottom, two feet nine inches thick, deposited by the stream, and
containing angular masses of limestone that had dropped from the roof,
was covered by a sheet of stalagmite three inches in thickness. On this
rested a mass of bones and implements imbedded in silt or sand, and
sealed over by a thickness of stalagmite of from two to eight inches.
[Illustration: FIG. 32.--Bronze Knife, Heathery Burn (natural size).]
[Illustration: FIG. 33.--Bronze Armlet, Heathery Burn.]
[Illustration: FIG. 34.--Bronze Spearhead, Heathery Burn (½ size).]
[Illustration: FIG. 35.--Bronze Mould for casting a socketed celt.]
On removing the upper of these two stalagmitic floors a perfect human
skull was discovered, along with broken bones of animals, charcoal,
limpet shells, bone pins, an instrument of bone like a paper-knife,
coarse pottery with fragments of chert imbedded in its mass, a portion
of a jet armlet, as well as several boars’ tusks. The same stratum
at another place furnished a singular bronze knife with a socket for
the handle (Fig. 32),[90] bronze pins, celts, an armlet of twisted
wire (Fig. 33), along with shells of limpet, mussel, and oyster, and
charcoal, and at a third, on the other side of the watercourse, a
bronze spear-head. Subsequently, many articles were added to the
above list, seven pins, three rings, two split-rings, a “razor,” disk,
three socketed celts, one chisel, two gouges, and four spear-heads of
bronze, and a fine bracelet, and two ornaments of the horse-shoe, or
split-ring type, made of thin plates of gold. One of the spear-heads,
in the collection of the Rev. Canon Greenwell, is represented in Fig.
34. There were also waste pieces of bronze, and the half of a bronze
mould for casting celts, Fig. 35, in which one of the associated celts
had actually been cast, since it is of the same pattern. These articles
were probably concealed in the cavern by workers in bronze, who were
prevented, by some unforeseen accident, from obtaining them again. The
charcoal and the broken bones of the _Bos longifrons_, badger, and dog,
imply that the cave had been used as a habitation; and possibly the
two human skulls, which have been described by Professor Huxley and
Mr. Carter Blake, may have belonged to the possessors of the hoard of
bronze and gold. Both were discovered in the same stratum and below the
floor of stalagmite.
The more perfect of the two skulls is considered by Professor Huxley to
belong to the same long-headed race of men as that found at Muskham, in
the valley of the Trent,--to a form which he terms the River-bed type,
and that cannot be separated from those obtained from the long tumuli
of the South of England, and considered by Dr. Thurnam to belong to a
Neolithic Basque, or Iberian population.
Articles distinctly of the bronze age have been already noticed as
having been met with in the caves of Kirkhead, in Cartmell, and in
Thor’s Cave, in Staffordshire. From the latter the bracelet of thin
bronze, Fig. 31, was obtained by Mr. Carrington, of Wetton. The rarity
of bronze implements in caves in Britain and the Continent is probably,
to a large extent, due to the value of the material, and to the fact
that it could be re-melted. If a bronze article happened to be broken,
the pieces would naturally be kept for future use, and not thrown away,
as in the case of a fractured stone implement. The former, therefore,
are rare, the latter comparatively abundant.
The cave called the Cat-Hole, in Gower (Glamorgan), explored by
Colonel Wood in 1864, contained several human skeletons, flint flakes,
fragments of red pottery marked with a string, cut bones, a stone
muller, and a bronze socketed celt. The last is of the same pattern
as some of those in the collection of the Rev. Canon Greenwell, from
Heathery Burn, and has been cast in a mould similar in size and
ornamentation to that figured in woodcut 35.
_The Caves of Césareda probably occupied by Cannibals._
The contents of three caves[91] in the Iberian peninsula, referable to
the dawn of the bronze age, render it very probable that the use of
human flesh was not unknown in those times.
In 1867 Senhor J. L. Delgado described his researches in the caverns
of Césareda, in the valley of the Tagus, in the Casa da Maura, Lapa
Furada, and Cova da Maura. The first of these contained two distinct
strata. The lower, consisting of sand mixed with fragments of rock,
rested on the stalagmite, and contained fragments of charcoal, one
implement of bone, and many of flint, a scraper, a flake, and an
arrow-head. The broken bones and teeth belonged to the following
animals:--The lynx, fox, brown-bear, dog and wolf, a species of deer,
the water-vole, and the rabbit. None of the remains of the carnivora
had been subjected to the action of fire, or had been used for food. A
human skull with lower jaw was dug out of the deepest part, but, since
the matrix had been disturbed, it had probably been interred after the
accumulation of the deposit.
It is recognized by Professor Busk[92] as belonging to the same long
type as the skulls of the caves of Gibraltar and the Basque graveyard,
measuring in length 6·7 inches, in breadth 5·3, in height 5·5, and
therefore possessing cephalic and latitudinal indices of ·785 and
·820.[93]
The upper stratum, a sandy loam, contained a large quantity of stones,
and numerous articles fabricated by man: polished-stone axes, flakes,
and other instruments of flint, bone, and antler, fragments of coarse
black pottery, with bits of calcareous spar imbedded in its substance,
and two plates of schist ornamented with a rude design, which may have
been used as amulets. Fragments of charcoal were scattered throughout
the matrix, and adhered to some of the pottery and to the burnt
pebbles. The most abundant remains were those of man. They were to be
counted by thousands, and were so fragmentary and scattered that it was
impossible to put together one perfect skeleton. The teeth, belonging
for the most part to children or fully-grown adults, were particularly
abundant. The long bones had lost, very generally, their articular
ends, had been fractured longitudinally, and some of them had been cut
and scraped. It is therefore probable that this accumulation was formed
by a tribe of cannibals: the evidence that human flesh formed their
principal food being precisely of the same nature as that by which the
flint-folk of the Périgord are proved to have subsisted on the flesh of
the reindeer. Professor Busk,[94] however, is inclined to believe the
facts in support of cannibalism insufficient. The associated animals
consisted of the bat, dormouse, rabbit, horse, a small ox, allied to
_Bos longifrons_, sheep or goat, wild cat, wolf, fox, and dog. The
contents of the other two caves were precisely of the same nature, and
had been accumulated under the same conditions.
A bronze arrow-head, discovered in the upper stratum, and the
ornamentation of the stone amulet, consisting of alternate triangles
and zigzag ladders, as remarked by Mr. John Evans, indicate that the
upper deposit belongs to the age of bronze, and probably to an early
stage, when stone was being superseded by bronze, since many stone
celts were found in the same spot.
The ancient burial-places of Ultz, in Westphalia, furnish a second
case of the practice of cannibalism, according to M. Schaaffhausen of
Bonn[95]. They are probably of the age of bronze.
_The Cave of Reggio, in Modena._
The human remains in a cave in the province of Reggio,[96] on the
northern flank of the Apennines, brought before the Prehistoric
Congress at Bologna by M. l’Abbé Chierici, and considered by him to be
proofs of cannibalism, are probably merely the result of interment in a
refuse-heap that had previously been accumulated. They were associated
with bronze pins, rivets, polished-stone axes, and various implements
of bone, fragments of pottery and of charcoal, bones of pig, sheep,
and dog, and belong therefore to the period of transition from the
neolithic to the bronze age.
The caves have contributed but very little to our knowledge of the
bronze-folk in any part of Europe. Examples, such as those given above,
are scattered through France and Spain, but they are not sufficiently
important to require notice. We could not expect that men, in the high
state of civilization implied by the beautiful jewellery and ornaments
which are distinctive of the bronze-folk, would have chosen the wild,
half-savage life which is involved in cave-habitation.