The Age of the "Red Man" of Wales
An Ancient Welshman--Aurignacian Culture in Britain--Coloured
Bones and Luck Charms--The Cave of Aurignac--Discovery at
Crô-Magnon Village--An Ancient Tragedy--Significant Burial
Customs--Crô-Magnon Characters--New Race Types in Central
Europe--Galley Hill Man--The Piltdown Skull--Ancient Religious
Beliefs--Life Principle in Blood--Why Body-painting was
practised--"Sleepers" in Caves--Red Symbolism in different
Countries--The Heart as the Seat of Life--The Green Stone
Talisman--"Soul Substance".
The earliest discovery of a representative of the Crô-Magnons was
made in 1823, when Dr. Buckland explored the ancient cave-dwelling of
Paviland in the vicinity of Rhossilly, Gower Peninsula, South Wales.
This cave, known as "Goat's Hole", is situated between 30 and 40
feet above the present sea-level, on the face of a steep sandstone
cliff about 100 feet in height; it is 60 feet in length and 200 feet
broad, while the roof attains an altitude of over 25 feet. When this
commodious natural shelter was occupied by our remote ancestors
the land was on a much lower level than it is now, and it could be
easily reached from the sea-shore. Professor Sollas has shown that
the Paviland cave-dwellers were in the Aurignacian stage of culture,
and that they had affinities with the tall Crô-Magnon peoples on the
Continent.[11]
[11] _Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute_, Vol.
XLIII, 1913.
A human skeleton of a tall man was found in the cave deposit in
association with the skull and tusks of a hairy mammoth, and with
implements of Aurignacian type. Apparently the Aurignacian colonists
had walked over the land-bridge connecting England with France many
centuries before the land sank and the Channel tides began to carve
out the white cliffs of Dover.
In his description of the bones of the ancient caveman, who has been
wrongly referred to as the "Red Lady of Paviland", Dr. Buckland wrote:
"They were all of them stained superficially with a dark
brick-red colour, and enveloped by a coating of a kind of
ruddle, composed of red micaceous oxide of iron, which stained
the earth, and in some parts extended itself to the distance of
about half an inch around the surface of the bones. The body
must have been entirely surrounded or covered over at the time
of its interment with this red substance."
Near the thighs were about two handfuls of small shells (_Nerita
litoralis_) which had evidently formed a waist girdle. Over forty
little rods of ivory, which may have once formed a long necklace, lay
near the ribs. A few ivory rings and a tongue-shaped implement or
ornament lay beside the body, as well as an instrument or charm made
of the metacarpal bone of a wolf.
The next great discovery of this kind was made twenty-nine years
later. In 1852 a French workman was trying to catch a wild rabbit on
a lower slope of the Pyrenees, near the town of Aurignac in Haute
Garonne, when he made a surprising find. From the rabbit's burrow
he drew out a large human bone. A slab of stone was subsequently
removed, and a grotto or cave shelter revealed. In the debris were
found portions of seventeen skeletons of human beings of different
ages and both sexes. Only two skulls were intact.
[Illustration: Upper Palæolithic Implements
1, Aurignacian (Chatelperron point). 2, 3, Aurignacian (keeled
scrapers). 4, Aurignacian point. 5, Magdalenian ("parrot-beak"
graving tool). 6, Solutrean (laurel-leaf point). 7, 8, 9,
Solutrean (drill, awl, and "shouldered" point). 10, 11, 12,
Magdalenian.]
This discovery created a stir in the town of Aurignac, and there
was much speculation regarding the tragedy that was supposed to
have taken place at some distant date. A few folks were prepared to
supply circumstantial details by connecting the discovery with vague
local traditions. No one dreamt that the burial-place dated back a
few thousand years, or, indeed, that the grotto had really been a
burial-place, and the mayor of the town gave instructions that the
bones should be interred in the parish cemetery.
Eight years elapsed before the grotto was visited by M. Louis Lartet,
the great French archæologist. Outside the stone slab he found the
remains of an ancient hearth, and a stone implement which had been
used for chipping flints. In the outer debris were discovered,
too, the bones of animals of the chase, and about a hundred flint
artifacts, including knives, projectiles, and sling-stones, besides
bone arrows, tools shaped from reindeer horns, and an implement like
a bodkin of roe-deer horn. It transpired that the broken bones of
animals included those of the cave-lion, the cave-bear, the hyæna,
the elk, the mammoth, and the woolly-haired rhinoceros--all of which
had been extinct in that part of the world for thousands of years.
As in the Paviland cave, there were indications that the dead had
been interred with ornaments or charms on their bodies. Inside
the grotto were found "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".
Perforated teeth of wild animals had evidently been used for a like
purpose.
The distinct industry revealed by the grotto finds has been named
Aurignacian, after Aurignac. Had the human bones not been removed,
the scientists would have definitely ascertained what particular
race of ancient men they represented.
It was not until the spring of 1868 that a flood of light was thrown
on the Aurignacian racial problem. A gang of workmen were engaged
in the construction of a railway embankment in the vicinity of the
village of Crô-Magnon, near Les Eyzies, in the valley of the River
Vézère, when they laid bare another grotto. Intimation was at once
made to the authorities, and the Minister of Public Instruction
caused an investigation to be made under the direction of M. Louis
Lartet. The remains of five human skeletons were found. At the back
of the grotto was the skull of an old man--now known as "the old
man of Crô-Magnon"--and its antiquity was at once emphasized by the
fact that some parts of it were coated by stalagmite caused by a
calcareous drip from the roof of rock. Near "the old man" was found
the skeleton of a woman. Her forehead bore signs of a deep wound that
had been made by a cutting instrument. As the inner edge of the bone
had partly healed, it was apparent she had survived her injury for
a few weeks. Beside her lay the skeleton of a baby which had been
prematurely born. The skeletons of two young men were found not far
from those of the others. Apparently a tragic happening had occurred
in ancient days in the vicinity of the Crô-Magnon grotto. The victims
had been interred with ceremony, and in accordance with the religious
rites prevailing at the time. Above three hundred pierced marine
shells, chiefly of the periwinkle species (_Littorina littorea_),
which are common on the Atlantic coasts, and a few shells of _Purpura
lapillus_ (a purple-yielding shell), _Turitella communis_, &c.,
were discovered besides the skeletons. These, it would appear,
had been strung to form necklaces and other ornamental charms. M.
Lartet found, too, a flat ivory pendant pierced with two holes, and
was given two other pendants picked up by young people. Near the
skeletons were several perforated teeth, a split block of gneiss with
a smooth surface, the worked antlers of a reindeer that may have been
used as a pick for excavating flint, and a few chipped flints. Other
artifacts of Aurignacian type were unearthed in the debris associated
with the grotto, which appears to have been used as a dwelling-place
before the interments had taken place.
[Illustration: Skull of a Crô-Magnon Man: front and side views
From the Grotte des Enfants, Mentone. (After Verneau.)]
The human remains of the Crô-Magnon grotto were those of a tall
and handsome race of which the "Red Man" of Paviland was a
representative. Other finds have shown that this race was widely
distributed in Europe. The stature of the men varied from 5 feet
10-1/2 inches to 6 feet 4-1/2 inches on the Riviera, that of the
women being slightly less. That the Crô-Magnons were people of high
intelligence is suggested by the fact that the skulls of the men
and women were large, and remarkably well developed in the frontal
region. According to a prominent anatomist the Crô-Magnon women had
bigger brains than has the average male European of to-day. All these
ancient skulls are of the dolichocephalic (long-headed) type. The
faces, however, were comparatively broad, and shorter than those of
the modern fair North-Europeans, while the cheek-bones were high--a
characteristic, by the way, of so many modern Scottish faces.
This type of head--known as the "disharmonic", because a broad face
is usually a characteristic of a broad skull, and a long face of
a long skull--has been found to be fairly common among the modern
inhabitants of the Dordogne valley. These French descendants of the
Crô-Magnons are, however, short and "stocky", and most of them have
dark hair and eyes. Crô-Magnon types have likewise been identified
among the Berbers of North Africa, and the extinct fair-haired
Guanches of the Canary Islands, in Brittany, on the islands of
northern Holland, and in the British Isles.[12]
[12] For principal references see _The Races of Europe_, W. Z.
Ripley, pp. 172 _et seq._, and _The Anthropological History of
Europe_, John Beddoe (Rhind lectures for 1891; revised edition,
1912), p. 47.
A comparatively short race, sometimes referred to as the
"Combe-Capelle", after the rock-shelter at Combe-Capelle, near
Montferrand, Perigord, was also active during the stage of
Aurignacian culture. An adult skeleton found in this shelter was
that of a man only 5 feet 3 inches in height. The skull is long and
narrow, with a lofty forehead, and the chin small and well developed.
It has some similarity to modern European skulls. The skeleton had
been subjected for thousands of years to the dripping of water
saturated with lime, and had consequently been well preserved. Near
the head and neck lay a large number of perforated marine shells
(_Littorina_ and _Nassa_). A collection of finely-worked flints of
early Aurignacian type also lay beside the body.
Reference may also be made here to the finds in Moravia. Fragmentary
skull caps from Brüx and Brünn are regarded as evidence of a race
which differed from the tall Crô-Magnons, and had closer affinities
with Combe-Capelle man. Some incline to connect the Brünn type with
England, the link being provided by a skeleton called the "Galley
Hill" after the place of its discovery below Gravesend and near
Northfleet in Kent. Scientists regard him as a contemporary of the
Aurignacian flint-workers of Combe-Capelle and Brünn. "Both the Brüx
and Brünn skulls", writes Professor Osborn, "are harmonic; they do
not present the very broad, high cheek-bones characteristic of the
Crô-Magnon race,[13] the face being of a narrow modern type, but not
very long. There is a possibility that the Brünn race was ancestral
to several later dolichocephalic groups which are found in the region
of the Danube and of middle and southern Germany."[14]
[13] That is, the tall representatives of the Crô-Magnon races.
[14] _Men of the Old Stone Age_, pp. 335-6.
The Galley Hill man had been buried in the gravels of the "high
terrace", 90 feet above the Thames. His bones when found were much
decayed and denuded, and the skull contorted. The somewhat worn
"wisdom tooth" indicates that he was a "fully-grown adult, though
probably not an aged individual". Those who think he was not as old
as the flints and the bones of extinct animals found in the gravels,
regard him as a pioneer of the Brünn branch of the Aurignacians.
The Piltdown skull appears to date back to a period vastly more
ancient than Neanderthal times.
Our special interest in the story of early man in Britain is with
the "Red Man" of Paviland and Galley Hill man, because these were
representatives of the species to which we ourselves belong. The
Neanderthals and pre-Neanderthals, who have left their Eoliths
and Palæoliths in our gravels, vanished like the glaciers and the
icebergs, and have left, as has been indicated, no descendants in our
midst. Our history begins with the arrival of the Crô-Magnon races,
who were followed in time by other peoples to whom Europe offered
attractions during the period of the great thaw, when the ice-cap was
shrinking towards the north, and the flooded rivers were forming the
beds on which they now flow.
We have little to learn from Galley Hill man. His geological horizon
is uncertain, but the balance of the available evidence tends to show
he was a pioneer of the medium-sized hunters who entered Europe from
the east, during the Aurignacian stage of culture. It is otherwise
with the "Red Man" of Wales. We know definitely what particular
family he belonged to; he was a representative of the tall variety
of Crô-Magnons. We know too that those who loved him, and laid his
lifeless body in the Paviland Cave, had introduced into Europe the
germs of a culture that had been radiated from some centre, probably
in the ancient forest land to the east of the Nile, along the North
African coast at a time when it jutted far out into the Mediterranean
and the Sahara was a grassy plain.
The Crô-Magnons were no mere savages who lived the life of animals
and concerned themselves merely with their material needs. They
appear to have been a people of active, inventive, and inquiring
minds, with a social organization and a body of definite beliefs,
which found expression in their art and in their burial customs.
The "Red Man" was so called by the archæologists because his bones
and the earth beside them were stained, as has been noted, by "red
micaceous oxide of iron". Here we meet with an ancient custom of
high significance. It was not the case, as some have suggested, that
the skeleton was coloured after the flesh had decayed. There was no
indication when the human remains were discovered that the grave had
been disturbed after the corpse was laid in it. The fact that the
earth as well as the bones retained the coloration affords clear
proof that the corpse had been smeared over with red earth which,
after the flesh had decayed, fell on the skeleton and the earth
and gravel beside it. But why, it will be asked, was the corpse
so treated? Did the Crô-Magnons paint their bodies during life,
as do the Australians, the Red Indians, and others, to provide "a
substitute for clothing"? That cannot be the reason. They could not
have concerned themselves about a "substitute" for something they
did not possess. In France, the Crô-Magnons have left pictorial
records of their activities and interests in their caves and other
shelters. Bas reliefs on boulders within a shelter at Laussel show
that they did not wear clothing during the Aurignacian epoch which
continued for many long centuries. We know too that the Australians
and Indians painted their bodies for religious and magical
purposes--to protect themselves in battle or enable them to perform
their mysteries--rain-getting, food-getting, and other ceremonies.
The ancient Egyptians painted their gods to "make them healthy".
Prolonged good health was immortality.
The evidence afforded by the Paviland and other Crô-Magnon burials
indicates that the red colour was freshly applied before the dead was
laid in the sepulchre. No doubt it was intended to serve a definite
purpose, that it was an expression of a system of beliefs regarding
life and the hereafter.
Apparently among the Crô-Magnons the belief was already prevalent
that the "blood is the life". The loss of life appeared to them to
be due to the loss of the red vitalizing fluid which flowed in the
veins. Strong men who received wounds in conflict with their fellows,
or with wild animals, were seen to faint and die in consequence
of profuse bleeding; and those who were stricken with sickness
grew ashen pale because, as it seemed, the supply of blood was
insufficient, a condition they may have accounted for, as did the
Babylonians of a later period, by conceiving that demons entered
the body and devoured the flesh and blood. It is not too much to
suppose that they feared death, and that like other Pagan religions
of antiquity theirs was deeply concerned with the problem of how
to restore and prolong life. Their medicine-men appear to have
arrived at the conclusion that the active principle in blood was
the substance that coloured it, and they identified this substance
with red earth. If cheeks grew pale in sickness, the flush of health
seemed to be restored by the application of a red face paint. The
patient did not invariably regain strength, but when he did, the
recovery was in all likelihood attributed to the influence of the
blood substitute. Rest and slumber were required, as experience
showed, to work the cure. When death took place, it seemed to be a
deeper and more prolonged slumber, and the whole body was smeared
over with the vitalizing blood substitute so that, when the spell of
weakness had passed away, the sleeper might awaken, and come forth
again with renewed strength from the cave-house in which he had been
laid.
The many persistent legends about famous "sleepers" that survive till
our own day appear to have originally been connected with a belief in
the return of the dead, the antiquity of which we are not justified
in limiting, especially when it is found that the beliefs connected
with body paint and shell ornaments and amulets were introduced
into Europe in early post-glacial times. Ancient folk heroes might
be forgotten, but from Age to Age there arose new heroes to take
their places; the habit of placing them among the sleepers remained.
Charlemagne, Frederick of Barbarossa, William Tell, King Arthur, the
Fians, and the Irish Brian Boroimhe, are famous sleepers. French
peasants long believed that the sleeping Napoleon would one day
return to protect their native land from invaders, and during the
Russo-Japanese war it was whispered in Russia that General Skobeleff
would suddenly awake and hasten to Manchuria to lead their troops to
victory. For many generations the Scots were convinced that James IV,
who fell at Flodden, was a "sleeper". His place was taken in time
by Thomas the Rhymer, who slept in a cave and occasionally awoke to
visit markets so that he might purchase horses for the great war
which was to redden Tweed and Clyde with blood. Even in our own day
there were those who refused to believe that General Gordon, Sir
Hector MacDonald, and Lord Kitchener, were really dead. The haunting
belief in sleeping heroes dies hard.
Among the famous groups of sleeping heroes are the Seven Sleepers
of Ephesus--the Christians who had been condemned to death by the
Emperor Decius and concealed themselves in a cave where they slept
for three and a half centuries. An eighteenth century legend tells
of seven men in Roman attire, who lay in a cave in Western Germany.
In Norse Mythology, the seven sons of Mimer sleep in the Underworld
awaiting the blast of the horn, which will be blown at Ragnarok when
the gods and demons will wage the last battle. The sleepers of Arabia
once awoke to foretell the coming of Mahomet, and their sleeping dog,
according to Moslem beliefs, is one of the ten animals that will
enter Paradise.
A representative Scottish legend regarding the sleepers is located at
the Cave of Craigiehowe in the Black Isle, Ross-shire, a few miles
distant from the Rosemarkie cave. It is told that a shepherd once
entered the cave and saw the sleepers and their dog. A horn, or as
some say, a whistle, hung suspended from the roof. The shepherd blew
it once and the sleepers shook themselves; he blew a second time,
and they opened their eyes and raised themselves on their elbows.
Terrified by the forbidding aspect of the mighty men, the shepherd
refrained from blowing a third time, but turned and fled. As he left
the cave he heard one of the heroes call after him: "Alas! you have
left us worse than you found us." As whistles are sometimes found in
Magdalenian shelters in Western and Central Europe, it may be that
these were at an early period connected with the beliefs about the
calling back of the Crô-Magnon dead. The ancient whistles were made
of hare--and reindeer-foot bone. The clay whistle dates from the
introduction of the Neolithic industry in Hungary.
The remarkable tendency on the part of mankind to cling to and
perpetuate ancient beliefs and customs, and especially those
connected with sickness and death, is forcibly illustrated by the
custom of smearing the bodies of the living and dead with red ochre.
In every part of the world red is regarded as a particularly "lucky
colour", which protects houses and human beings, and imparts vitality
to those who use it. The belief in the protective value of red
berries is perpetuated in our own Christmas customs when houses are
decorated with holly, and by those dwellers in remote parts who still
tie rowan berries to their cows' tails so as to prevent witches and
fairies from interfering with the milk supply. Egyptian women who
wore a red jasper in their waist-girdles called the stone "a drop of
the blood of Isis (the mother goddess)".
Red symbolism is everywhere connected with lifeblood and the "vital
spark"--the hot "blood of life". Brinton[15] has shown that in the
North American languages the word for blood is derived from the word
for red or the word for fire. The ancient Greek custom of painting
red the wooden images of gods was evidently connected with the belief
that a supply of lifeblood was thus assured, and that the colour
animated the Deity, as Homer's ghosts were animated by a blood
offering when Odysseus visited Hades. "The anointing of idols with
blood for the purpose of animating them is", says Farnell, "a part
of old Mediterranean magic."[16] The ancient Egyptians, as has been
indicated, painted their gods, some of whom wore red garments; a
part of their underworld Dewat was "Red Land", and there were "red
souls" in it.[17] In India standing stones connected with deities
are either painted red or smeared with the blood of a sacrificed
animal. The Chinese regard red as the colour of fire and light, and
in their philosophy they identify it with _Yang_, the chief principle
of life;[18] it is believed "to expel pernicious influences, and
thus particularly to symbolize good luck, happiness, delight, and
pleasure". Red coffins are favoured. The "red gate" on the south
side of a cemetery "is never opened except for the passage of an
Emperor".[19] The Chinese put a powdered red stone called _hun-hong_
in a drink or in food to destroy an evil spirit which may have taken
possession of one. Red earth is eaten for a similar reason by the
Polynesians and others. Many instances of this kind could be given to
illustrate the widespread persistence of the belief in the vitalizing
and protective qualities associated with red substances. In Irish
Gaelic, Professor W. J. Watson tells me, "ruadh" means both "red" and
"strong".
[15] _Myths of the New World_, p. 163.
[16] _Cults of the Greek States_, Vol. V. p. 243.
[17] Budge, _Gods of the Egyptians_. Vol. I, p. 203.
[18] De Groot, _The Religious System of China_, Book I, pp. 216-7.
[19] _Ibid._, Book I, pp. 28 and 332.
The Crô-Magnons regarded the heart as the seat of life, having
apparently discovered that it controls the distribution of blood.
In the cavern of Pindal, in south-western France, is the outline
of a hairy mammoth painted in red ochre, and the seat of life is
indicated by a large red heart. The painting dates back to the early
Aurignacian period. In other cases, as in the drawing of a large
bison in the cavern of Niaux, the seat of life and the vulnerable
parts are indicated by spear--or arrowheads incised on the body. The
ancient Egyptians identified the heart with the mind. To them the
heart was the seat of intelligence and will-power as well as the
seat of life. The germ of this belief can apparently be found in the
pictorial art and burial customs of the Aurignacian Crô-Magnons.
[Illustration: Outline of a Mammoth painted in red ochre in the
Cavern of Pindal, France
The seat of life is indicated by a large red heart. (After
Breuil.)]
Another interesting burial custom has been traced in the Grimaldi
caves. Some of the skeletons were found to have small green stones
between their teeth or inside their mouths.[20] No doubt these
were amulets. Their colour suggests that green symbolism has not
necessarily a connection with agricultural religion, as some have
supposed. The Crô-Magnons do not appear to have paid much attention
to vegetation. In ancient Egypt the green stone (Khepera) amulet
"typified the germ of life". A text says, "A scarab of green stone
... shall be placed in the heart of a man, and it shall perform for
him the 'opening of the mouth'"--that is, it will enable him to
speak and eat again. The scarab is addressed in a funerary text, "My
heart, my mother. My heart whereby I came into being." It is believed
by Budge that the Egyptian custom of "burying green basalt scarabs
inside or on the breasts of the dead" is as old as the first Dynasty
(_c._ 3400 B.C.).[21] How much older it is one can only speculate.
"The Mexicans", according to Brinton, "were accustomed to say that
at one time all men have been stones, and that at last they would
all return to stones, and acting literally on this conviction they
interred with the bones of the dead a small green stone, which was
called 'the principle of life'."[22] In China the custom of placing
jade tongue amulets for the purpose of preserving the dead from
decay and stimulating the soul to take flight to Paradise is of
considerable antiquity.[23] Crystals and pebbles have been found
in ancient British graves. It may well be that these pebbles were
regarded as having had an intimate connection with deities, and
perhaps to have been coagulated forms of what has been called "life
substance". Of undoubted importance and significance was the ancient
custom of adorning the dead with shells. As we have seen, this was a
notable feature of the Paviland cave burial. The "Red Man" was not
only smeared with red earth, but "charmed" or protected by shell
amulets. In the next chapter it will be shown that this custom not
only affords us a glimpse of Aurignacian religious beliefs, but
indicates the area from which the Crô-Magnons came.
[20] I am indebted to the Abbé Breuil for this information which
he gave me during the course of a conversation.
[21] Budge, _Gods of the Egyptians_, Vol. I, p. 358. These
scarabs have not been found in the early Dynastic graves. Green
malachite charms, however, were used in even the pre-Dynastic
period.
[22] _The Myths of the New World_, p. 294. According to Bancroft
the green stones were often placed in the mouths of the dead.
[23] Laufer, _Jade_, pp. 294 _et seq._ (Chicago, 1912).
Professor G. Elliot Smith was the first to emphasize the importance
attached in ancient times to the beliefs associated with the divine
"giver of life".