Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
file which includes the original illustrations.
See 41649-h.htm or 41649-h.zip:
(https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/41649/pg41649-images.html)
or
(https://www.gutenberg.org/files/41649/41649-h.zip)
Images of the original pages are available through
Internet Archive. See
http://archive.org/details/newstoneageinnor00tyleuoft
[Illustration: RECONSTRUCTED LAKE-DWELLINGS]
THE NEW STONE AGE IN NORTHERN EUROPE
by
JOHN M. TYLER
Professor Emeritus of Biology, Amherst College
New York
Charles Scribner's Sons
1922
Copyright, 1921, by
Charles Scribner's Sons
Printed in the United States of America
Published March, 1921
TO
JOSEPH DÉCHELETTE
PATRIOT AND ARCHÆOLOGIST
KILLED IN BATTLE AT VINGRÉ (AISNE)
OCTOBER 3, 1914
PREFACE
The dawn of history came late in Northern Europe and the morning was
stormy. We see the Roman Empire struggling in vain to hold back
successive swarms of barbarians, pouring from a dim, misty, mysterious
northland. Centuries of destruction and confusion follow; then gradually
states and institutions emerge, and finally our own civilization, which,
though still crude and semibarbarous, has its glories as well as its
obvious defects.
The growth, development, and training of these remarkable destroyers and
rebuilders was slowly going on through the ages of prehistoric time.
Most of the germs, and many of the determinants, of our modern
institutions and civilization can be recognized in the habits, customs,
and life of the Neolithic period. Hence the importance of its study to
the historian and sociologist. It has left us an abundance of records,
if we can decipher and interpret them. It opens with savages living on
shell-heaps along the Baltic. Later we find the stone monuments of the
dead rising in France, England, Scandinavia, and parts of Germany. They
begin as small rude shelters and end as temples, like that at
Stonehenge. People were thinking and cooperating, and there must have
been no mean social organization.
We find agriculture highly developed in the valleys of the Danube and
its tributaries. We see villages erected on piles along the shores of
the Swiss lakes--probably a later development. We find implements,
pottery, and bones of animals; charred grains of wheat and barley and
loaves of bread; cloth and ornaments--almost a complete inventory of the
food and furnishings of the people of this period. We should call them
highly civilized, had they been able to write their own history. What
was their past and whence had they come?
Implements and pottery tell us of exchange of patterns and ideas, or may
suggest migrations of peoples, and finally map out long trade-routes.
Some day the study of the pottery will give us a definite chronology,
but not yet.
We can reconstruct, to some extent, these phases of prehistoric life.
Our greatest difficulties begin when we attempt to combine these
separate parts in one pattern or picture, to trace their chronological
succession or the extent of their overlappings and their mutual
influence and relations in custom and thought. Here, we admit, our
knowledge is still very vague and inadequate. Twenty years ago the
problem seemed insoluble; perhaps it still remains so. But during that
time explorations, investigations, and study have given us many most
important facts and suggestions. Some inferences we can accept with a
fair degree of confidence, others have varying degrees of probability,
sometimes we can only guess. But guesses do no harm, if acknowledged and
recognized as such.
I venture to hope that historian and sociologist may find valuable facts
and suggestions in this book. But, while writing it, I have thought more
often of the eager young student who may glance over its pages, feel the
allurement of some topic and resolve to know more about it. The
bibliography is prepared especially for him. It is anything but
complete. The literature of the period is almost endless. I have
referred to only a few of the best and most suggestive works. They will
introduce him to a chain of others. If he studies their facts and
arguments he will probably reject some of my opinions or theories,
modify others, and form his own. If I can do any young student this
service, my work will have been amply repaid. America has sent few
laborers into this rich harvest field.
I wish that this little book might play the part of a good host, and
introduce many intelligent, thoughtful, and puzzled readers to the
company and view-point of the prehistorian.
In prehistory we find man entering upon course after course of hard and
rigid discipline and training, usually under the spur of necessity, the
best of all teachers. Every course lasts through millennia. Their chief
end is to socialize and humanize individual men. Environment, natural or
artificial, is a means to this end. It compels men to struggle, each
with himself; only as men improve is any marked change of conditions
possible or desirable. Men must "pass" in the lower course before they
can be promoted to the next higher, to find here a similar field of
struggle on a somewhat higher plane. Human evolution, as a process of
humanizing and socializing man, is and must be chiefly ethical; for
ethics is nothing more nor less than the science and art of living
rightly with one's neighbor. And man is incurably religious, always
feeling after the power or powers in or behind nature, whose essential
character she is compelling him to express, as her inadequate but only
mouthpiece. He will gradually become like what he is feeling after,
dimly recognizing, and rudely worshipping. These are the most important
departments of the school of prehistoric man.
The story told us by the evolutionist and prehistorian is full of
surprises. It tells us of the failure of dominant species of animals and
of promising races of men. It shows men plodding wearily through
hardship and discouragement, and finding therein the road to success.
The apparently dormant peoples and periods often prove in the end to
have been those of most rapid advance. "The race is not to the swift nor
the battle to the strong." But it enables us to plot the line of human
progress by points far enough apart to allow us to distinguish between
minor and temporary oscillations and fluctuations and the law of the
curve. The torch is passed from people to people and from continent to
continent, but never falls or goes out. There is always a "saving
remnant." We have grounds for a reasonable hope, not of a millennium,
but of success in struggle. The economist, sociologist, and even the
historian, are lookouts on the ship; evolution and prehistory must
furnish chart and compass, and tell us our port of destination.
Many or most of the best thoughts in this book are borrowed. Some of
these borrowings are credited to their owners in the bibliography. Of
many others I can no longer remember the source. The recollection of
successive classes of students in Amherst College, with whom I have
discussed these topics, will always be a source of inspiration and
gratitude. I owe many valuable suggestions to my colleagues in the
faculty, especially to Professor F. B. Loomis. To the unfailing kindness
and ability of Mr. and Miss Erb, of the Library of Columbia University;
to Professor H. F. Osborn for his generous hospitality; to the staff of
the Boston Public Library; to Doctor L. N. Wilson, of the Library of
Clark University; most of all, to Mr. R. L. Fletcher and his assistants,
of the Library of Amherst College, my debt is greater than can be
expressed in any word of thanks.
CONTENTS
Page
PREFACE vii
CHAPTER
I. THE COMING OF MAN 3
THE ANCESTORS OF MAN. THE PRIMATES AND ARBOREAL
LIFE. THE DESCENT FROM THE TREES.
PITHECANTHROPUS. THE ORIGINAL HOMELAND.
HUMAN RACES AND EARLIEST MIGRATIONS. THE
ARRIVAL IN EUROPE. THE GREAT ICE AGE. HEIDELBERG
MAN. NEANDERTHAL AND CRO-MAGNON
RACES.
II. THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION. SHELL-HEAPS 36
THE RETREAT OF THE GLACIERS. DANISH SHELL-HEAPS.
MUGEM. MAGELMOSE. RINNEKALNS.
AZILIAN-TARDENOISIAN EPOCH OF TRANSITION.
CAMPIGNY. THE FIRST IMMIGRANTS.
III. LAND HABITATIONS 53
NEOLITHIC CAVE-DWELLERS. PIT-DWELLINGS AND
HUTS. GROSGARTACH. FORTIFIED VILLAGES,
FOREST, AND STEPPE. LOESS.
IV. LAKE-DWELLINGS 69
PLATFORMS AND HOUSES. DOG, CATTLE, PIGS,
SHEEP. CULTIVATED PLANTS. FRUITS, SPINNING
AND WEAVING-EPOCHS.
V. A GLANCE EASTWARD 91
CRADLE OF NEOLITHIC CULTURE. BABYLONIA.
ANAU, SUSA. THE BEGINNINGS OF AGRICULTURE.
PLATEAUS AND PIEDMONT ZONES. HOE-TILLAGE.
THE PLOUGH. SUMMARY.
VI. MEGALITHS 114
DOLMENS. "GALLERY CHAMBERS." MENHIRS.
DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD. INCINERATION.
VII. NEOLITHIC INDUSTRIES 131
DRESS. FLINT AND BONE IMPLEMENTS. AXES.
MATTOCKS. FLINT MINES. SALT. GOLD. COPPER.
TRADE. WARES. AMBER. TRADE-ROUTES. POTTERY,
BANDED, CORDED AND CALCYCIFORM, INCRUSTED
POTTERY.
VIII. NEOLITHIC CHRONOLOGY 160
FINAL RETREAT OF GLACIERS. YOLDIA EPOCH.
ANCYLUS EPOCH--LITTORINA DEPRESSION. DATE
OF BEGINNING AND OF END OF NEOLITHIC PERIOD.
FOREST SUCCESSIONS. MAGELMOSE AND SHELL-HEAPS.
SUCCESSIVE TYPES OF AXE. CHARTS.
IX. NEOLITHIC PEOPLES AND THEIR MIGRATIONS 179
PALÆOLITHIC RACES AND MIGRATIONS. MEDITERRANEAN
RACE. ROUTES OF MIGRATION. AFRICAN,
MEDITERRANEAN, SOUTH RUSSIAN STEPPE ROUTE.
NEOLITHIC PEOPLES AND THEIR DISTRIBUTION.
NORDIC PEOPLES. THE DANUBE VALLEY. THE
"MELTING-POT" OF CENTRAL EUROPE. PIONEER
LIFE.
X. NEOLITHIC RELIGION 206
PALEOLITHIC RELIGION, THE AGE OF WONDER:
NEOLITHIC RELIGION AND EXPERIENCE. RITUAL.
TABOO AND TRIBAL RESPONSIBILITY. GREEK MYSTERIES.
THE COMING OF THE OLYMPIANS, AND
THE RETURN OF THE ANCIENT CULTS, SOURCES
OF THEIR VITALITY. CULT OF THE GODDESS AND
MOTHER-RIGHT. RELATION TO AGRICULTURE.
SOCIAL POSITION OF WOMEN.
XI. PROGRESS 228
THE MEDITERRANEAN AND THE BALTIC. SOURCE
OF PROGRESS NOT IN WAR. AGRICULTURE. HOME
TRAINING. THE NEIGHBORHOOD. RELIGION. PHILOSOPHY.
MINGLING OF CULTURES AND PEOPLES.
XII. THE COMING OF THE INDO-EUROPEANS 246
ARYAN AND EUROPEAN LANGUAGES. ORIGINAL
LANGUAGE; SPREAD AND MODIFICATIONS. EARLIEST
MIGRATIONS. THE ACHÆANS. THE AGE OF
HEROES. CITY-STATES IN GREECE. ABSORPTION
OF INVADERS. HOMELAND. INDO-EUROPEAN RELIGION.
PERSISTENCE OF NEOLITHIC SURVIVALS.
FOLK-LORE AND FAIRY-TALE. COMMON PEOPLE.
LEGISLATION. THE CHURCH. LIFE CURRENTS.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 293
INDEX 309
ILLUSTRATIONS
Reconstructed Lake-Dwellings _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Human Figures, Spain--Early Neolithic 32
Drawings of Animals (Cro-Magnon) from Altamira 32
Shell-Heap 40
Shell-Heap Axe 40
Shell-Heap Jar 40
Weaving and Plaiting from Lake-Dwellings 84
"Crouching Burial" (Hockerbestattung), Adlerborg,
near Worms 116
Menhir, Carnac, Brittany 116
Dolmen, Haga, Island of Borust 116
Alignment, Carnac, Brittany 124
Modern Albanian Peasants in Neolithic Garments 132
Axes from Lake-Dwellings Showing Attachment to
Handles 136
Boats from Rock Carvings in Bohuslan, Sweden.
(Early Bronze Age) 146
Pottery from Neolithic Graves 154
Pottery 158
Successive Stages and Forms of Baltic Sea 162
Forms of Prehistoric Axe 174
Female Idols, Thrace 218
Female Idol, Anau 218
Ancient Fishermen 232
Early Agriculture 236
MAP
Migrations of Peoples 184
THE NEW STONE AGE
IN NORTHERN EUROPE
The first of the two numbers and the letter in the footnotes
designate the position in the Bibliography at the end of the
volume of the title referred to; the second refers to the page of
the book or article.
THE NEW STONE AGE IN NORTHERN EUROPE
CHAPTER I
THE COMING OF MAN
Man has been described as a "walking museum of paleontology." He is like
a mountain whose foundations were laid in a time so ancient that even
the paleontologist hardly finds a record to decipher; whose strata
testify to the progress of life through all the succeeding ages; whose
surface, deeply ploughed by the glaciers, is clothed with grass and
forest, flower and fruit, the harvest of the life of to-day.
Some of his organs are exceedingly old, while others are but of
yesterday; yet all are highly developed in due proportion, knit and
harmonized in a marvellously tough, vigorous, adaptable body, the
instrument of a thinking and willing mind. Most surviving animals have
outlived their day of progress; they have "exhausted their lead," to
borrow a miner's expression, and have settled down in equilibrium with
their surroundings. But discontented man is wisely convinced that his
golden age lies in the future, and that his best possessions are his
hopes and dreams, his castles in Spain. He is chiefly a bundle of vast
possibilities, of great expectations, compared with which his
achievements and realizations are scarcely larger than the central point
of a circle compared with its area.
Physically he belongs to the great branch or phylum of vertebrate
animals having a backbone--sometimes only a rod of cartilage--an internal
locomotive skeleton, giving the possibility of great strength and
swiftness, and of large size. Large size, with its greater
heat-producing mass relative to its radiating surface, implies the
possibility of warm blood, or constant high temperature, resulting in
greater activity of all the organs, especially of the glands and the
nervous system. Large size, as a rule, is accompanied by long
life--giving opportunities for continuous and wide experience, and hence
for intelligence. Yet most vertebrates have remained cold-blooded, and
only a "saving remnant" even of men is really intelligent. Man belongs
to the highest class of vertebrates, the Mammals, which produce living
young and suckle them. Among the highest mammals, the Primates, or apes,
the length of the periods of gestation, of suckling the young, and of
childhood, with its dependence upon the mother, have become so long that
she absolutely requires some sort of help and protection from the male
parent. From this necessity have sprung various grades and forms of what
we may venture to call family life, with all its advantages. How many
mammals have attained genuine family life and how many men have realized
its possibilities?[1]
The upward march of our ancestors was neither easy nor rapid. They were
anything but precocious. They were always ready to balk at progress,
stiff-necked creatures who had to be driven and sternly held in the line
of progress by stronger competitors. The ancestors of vertebrates
maintained the swimming habit, which resulted in the development of the
internal skeleton and finally of a backbone, not because it was easiest
or most desirable, but because any who went to the rich feeding-grounds
of the sea-bottom were eaten up by the mollusks and crabs. Our earliest
air-breathing ancestors were crowded toward, and finally to the land,
and into air-breathing by the pressure of stronger marine forms like
sharks, or by climatic changes.[2] Reptiles, not mammals, dominated the
earth throughout the Mesozoic era, and harried our ancestors into
agility and wariness; at a later period the apes remained in the school
of arboreal life mainly because the ground was forbidden and policed by
the Carnivora. They and their forebears were compelled to forego some
present ease and comfort, but always kept open the door to the future.
In spite of all this vigorous policing, malingerers and deserters turned
aside from the upward line of march at every unguarded point or fork in
the road, escaped from the struggle, and settled down in ease and
stagnation or degeneration, like our very distant cousins, the monkeys
and lower apes. Long-continued progress is a marked exception, not the
rule, in the animal world, and is maintained only by the "saving
remnant." And these continue to progress mainly because Nature is
"always a-chivying of them and a-telling them to move on," as Poor Joe
said of Detective Bucket, and her guiding wand is the spur of necessity.
The Primates, or apes, are, as we have seen, the highest order of the
great class of mammals. Most of them, like other comparatively
defenseless vertebrates, are gregarious or even social.[3] They have a
feeling of kind, if not of kindness, toward one another. This
sociability, together with the family as a unit of social structure, has
contributed incalculably to human intellectual and moral development.
Man is a Primate, a distant cousin of the highest apes, though no one of
these represents our "furry arboreal ancestor with pointed ears."
Arboreal life was an excellent preparatory training toward human
development. Our primate ancestor was probably of fair size. In climbing
he set his feet on one branch and grasped with his hands the branch
above his head. Foot and leg were used to support the body, hand and arm
for pulling. Thus the hand became a true hand and the foot a genuine
foot, opening up the possibility of the erect posture on the ground and
the adaptation of the hand to higher uses. Meanwhile the climbing and
leaping from branch to branch, the measuring with the eye of distances
and strength of branches, the power of grasping the right point at the
right instant, and all the complicated series of movements combined in
this form of locomotion furnished a marvellous set of exercises not only
for the muscles but for the higher centres in the cortex of the brain.
Very probably gregarious life and rude play, so common among apes, was
an extension course along somewhat similar lines.
Our ancestors became at home in and well adapted to arboreal life, but
the adaptation was never extreme. It was rather what Jones[4] has called
a "successful minimal adaptation." They used arboreal life without
abusing it by over-adaptation, which would have enslaved them, and made
life on the ground an impossibility when the time came for their
promotion to this new and more advanced stage.
At the close of his arboreal life the ape had inherited or acquired the
following assets: His vertebrate and mammalian structure had given him a
large, vigorous, compact, athletic, adaptable body. The mammalian care
of the young had insured their survival, but only at the expense of
great strain and risk of the mother. Something at least approaching
family life was already attained. Arboreal life with its gymnastic
training had moulded the body, differentiated hand and foot, given the
possibility of erect posture, emancipating the hand from the work of
locomotion and setting it free to become a tool-fashioning and
tool-using organ. The ape has keen sense-organs, an eye for distances,
and other conditions; and the use of these powers has given him a brain
far superior to that of any of his humbler fellows. These are full of
great possibilities and opportunities, if he will only use them.
But why did our ancestor descend from his place of safety in the trees
and live on the ground, exposed to the attacks of fierce, swift, and
well-armed enemies? Very few of the Primates, except the rock and
cliff-inhabiting baboons, ever made this great venture. There must have
been some quite compelling argument to induce him to take so great a
risk. The change took place probably at some time during the latter half
of the Cenozoic or Tertiary period, the last great division of
geological time, the Age of mammals.[5] The earliest Tertiary Epoch, the
Eocene, was a time of warm and equable climate, when apes lived far
north in Europe, and doubtless in Asia also. Some of these apes were of
fair or large size, showing that conditions were favorable and food
abundant. The next epoch, the Oligocene, was similar but somewhat
cooler. The third, the Miocene, was cooler still and dryer. Palms now
forsook northern Europe, being gradually driven farther and farther
south. Life became more difficult, food scarcer. Apes could not longer
survive in northern Europe, but had to seek a warmer, more favorable,
environment farther south, for many of the fruit and food trees had
been crowded out and famine threatened.[6] But insects and other small
and toothsome animals remained on the ground, and were abundant along
the shores of rivers and lakes. There, too, were fruits and berries,
roots and tubers. There the food supply was still more than sufficient.
Thus far we have glanced at Europe only. But the same changes are taking
place in Asia, the cradle and home of most placental mammals, the main
area of a huge zoological province of which Europe was but a westward
projection, and with which America had direct connection from time to
time in the region of Behring's Straits. Here, during late Miocene and
early Pliocene times, in the latter part of the Cenozoic era, a dryer
and somewhat harsher climate had been accompanied by the appearance of
wide plains fitted for grazing animals, as well as stretches of forest,
with all varieties of landscape favoring great diversity as well as
abundance of mammalian life. It was, perhaps, the golden age for most
mammals, when food was plenty, climate not too severe, and every
prospect pleased. This slow and gradual, but fairly steady, lowering of
temperature was to culminate in the Great Ice Age of the Pleistocene
Epoch, so destructive to mammalian life in the northern hemisphere.
A second climatic change, perhaps even more important than the lowering
temperature, was the increase of aridity. Even during the Oligocene
Epoch "the flora indicates a lessening humidity and a clearer
differentiation of the seasons,"[7] The great trough of the inland sea
which had stretched from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean began to
rise, the first uplift taking place along the Pyrenees and western Alps.
The Miocene was marked by a series of great movements. The old inland
sea was displaced, subsidence gave place to uplift, and the greatest
mountain system of the globe, including the Alps and the Himalayas,
began to grow through vast repeated uplifts in the crust.[8] The
continents were elevated and widened. The forest-dwelling types became
restricted and largely exterminated, and animals of the plains, in the
form of horses, rhinoceroses, and the cloven-hoofed ruminants, expanded
in numbers and in species. This profound faunal change implies dryer
climate. There was now a lesser area of tropic seas to give moisture to
the atmosphere. The mountains were now effective barriers, shutting off
the moisture-bearing winds from the interior of the continents.
These changes would have been noticeable in Europe north of the Alps,
but were far more so in central Asia along the northern face of the
great plateau of Thibet, with its eastern and western buttresses, and
its towering rampart of the Himalayas on the south, cutting off the warm
moisture of the Indian Ocean. Northward of this vast plateau and
westward over the far less elevated Iranian plateau and Afghanistan,
forest was fast being replaced by parklands of mingled groves and
glades, or by grassy plains, or even by dry steppes. Dessication,
aridity of climate, was fast compelling forest and arboreal mammals to
migrate or radically change their habits of life.[9]
Almost all the apes found their old environment and continued their
arboreal life by migrating far southward through India or into Africa.
But at the rear of the retreating host were forms from the cooler
northern regions. They were hardy and vigorous, and probably larger than
most of their fellows. Possibly some of them were caught in isolated
decreasing areas of forest surrounded by steppe or plain. Some of them,
at least, began to descend from the trees, to seek the new food
supplies of riversides, glades, and thickets, and thus gradually to
become accustomed to life on the ground. It was a very hazardous
experiment; only the most hardy and wary and the quickest in perception,
wit, and movement survived. Among these were our ancestors, driven like
all their forebears by the spur of necessity into a new mode of life
under trying conditions.
They were still only apes, with long arms and short legs, and probably
scrambled mostly on all fours. They had heavy brows, retreating
foreheads, projecting jaws, and a brutal physiognomy. Of the mental life
of the man who was to be descended from them there were few signs. They
were bundles of very slight possibilities.
But let us not "despise the day of small things." They were still far
from the invisible line between apedom and manhood. Physically they
resembled man quite closely. They had hand and foot, and a fair-sized
brain, though they had scarcely begun to realize the possibilities of
these structures.
Arboreal life could teach them little more; continuance in that school
would have meant a very comfortable stagnation. They were now promoted
to a new school of vastly more difficult problems, greater risks and
dangers, and more severe and trying discipline. They had had an
excellent course of manual and sensory training; now they must continue
this and add to it the use of whatever wits they had, under peril of
death. Nature was still compelling them to "move on."
This descent to the ground probably was accomplished either in India or
on the Iranian plateau, or somewhat farther to the northeast, somewhere
in the great horseshoe of parkland which curved around the western
buttress of the great central Asiatic plateau of Thibet. Can we locate
it somewhat more definitely?[10]
At this time, during the Pliocene Epoch, there were being deposited in
India the so-called Siwalik strata--vast, ancient flood-plains,
stretching for a distance of 1,500 miles along the southern foot-hills
of the Himalayas. They are composed of materials washed down from the
mountains by a system of rivers, persisting with little change into the
present. Says Osborn of the mammals found here: "It is altogether the
grandest assemblage of mammals the world has ever seen, distributed
through southern and eastern Asia, and probably, if our vision could be
extended, ranging westward toward Persia and Arabia into northern
Africa. It is the most truly cosmopolitan aggregation because in its
Upper Pliocene stage it represents a congress of mammals from four great
continents.... The only continents which do not contribute to this
assemblage are South America and Australia."[11] The older, Miocene,
portions of this fauna are chiefly browsing forest forms, emphasized by
the absence of both horses and Hipparion, as well as of grazing types of
cattle and antelopes. Grazing forms, showing the decline of the forest
and the spread of open parkland and grassy areas, become abundant during
the Pliocene Epoch. "Among the Primates we find the Orang, an ape now
confined to Borneo and Sumatra; also the Chimpanzee, another ape, now
confined to Africa, the Siwalik species displaying a more human type of
dentition than that of the existing African form."
In the older, Miocene, portion we find Sivapithecus, an ape which
Pilgrim considers as more nearly resembling man than any other genus of
anthropoids, while Gregory speaks of it as belonging to the anthropoid
line.[12] Somewhat later, in late Pliocene or early Pleistocene, there
was living not far away, in Java, a far more renowned form,
_Pithecanthropus erectus_, _Du Bois_, which seems to stand almost
exactly midway between higher apes and man. The remains consisted of two
molar teeth, a thigh-bone, and the top of a skull. The cranium is low,
the forehead exceedingly retreating, giving but very small space for the
frontal lobes of the brain. But the brain-cast, made from the cranial
cavity, shows, according to Du Bois, that the speech area is about twice
as large as in certain apes, though only one-half as large as in man. In
size the brain stands somewhat above midway between the highest recent
apes and the lowest existing men. The thigh-bone shows that
Pithecanthropus could have stood and walked erect quite comfortably.
There has been and still is much difference of opinion regarding the
position of this most interesting being. Opinion was long divided nearly
equally between those who considered it as the highest ape and others
who held it to be the very lowest man.
It is worthy of notice that, when Pithecanthropus was alive, "Java was a
part of the Asiatic continent; and similar herds of great mammals roamed
freely over the plains from the foot-hills of the Himalaya Mountains to
the borders of the ancient Trinil River, while similar apes inhabited
the forests. At the same time the Orang may have entered the forests of
Borneo, which are at present its home."[13] Where man's distant cousins,
the anthropoid apes, and his still nearer relation, Pithecanthropus,
were all living and some, at least, apparently progressing, could hardly
have been far from his original home. But the climatic conditions of
that time lead us to seek his original cradle somewhat farther northward
than India, or even Beluchistan, and nearer to, if not in, the great
steppe zone of central Asia. We lose sight of our ape-man as he is
advancing toward the threshold of manhood, not far away. Whether we
think that Pithecanthropus was approaching or had already passed it
depends much upon where we draw the line between ape and man, a line
largely artificial and as difficult to fix as the day and hour when the
youth becomes of age, and what human characteristics we select to mark
it. In his erect posture and some other physical traits he seems already
to have attained manhood; mentally he was probably far inferior to even
the lowest savage races of to-day. We are not sure whether he was our
ancestor or merely a cousin of our ancestor, once or twice removed; we
still lack foundations for any hypotheses as to exactly when, where, or
how the erect ancestral ape-man emerged into real manhood.
Millennia passed between the days of Pithecanthropus and the first human
migrations, and we may imagine primitive man as having become fairly
well accustomed to life on the ground, and as having mastered his first
lessons in meeting its dangers and difficulties. He had probably taken
possession of a much wider area than the home of the ape-man, perhaps of
the whole of the parkland zone curving around the western buttresses of
the plateau of Thibet. From this region routes of migration radiated in
all directions, all the more open because of the elevation of land which
lasted through Upper Pliocene and early Pleistocene times.[14] Sumatra
and Java then formed an extension of the Malay Peninsula, reaching more
than 1,000 miles into the Indian Ocean; while the Orang seems to have
been able to reach Borneo somewhat earlier. The way was equally clear
westward into Europe, the Dardanelles being then replaced by a land
bridge, while a second bridge spanned the Mediterranean over Sicily into
Italy, and a third existed at Gibraltar.[15] These routes were evidently
followed by herds of great herbivora, and probably by the earliest
human emigrants into Europe.
Following Keane,[16] we shall divide mankind into four great groups or
races, and then glance at their radiation from southwestern Asia toward
all parts of the globe. These great primitive divisions are:
I. _Negroids._ Color yellowish brown to black, stature large or very
small. Hair short, black or reddish brown, frizzly, flattened-elliptical
in cross-section. Nose broad and flattened. Cheek-bones small, somewhat
retreating. Examples: Negritoes, Negroes.
II. _Mongoloids._ Color yellowish. Stature below average. Hair coarse,
lank, round in cross-section. Nose very small. Cheek-bones prominent.
Examples: Malays, Chinese, Japanese, Thibetans, Siberian "Hyperboreans."
III. _Americans._ Color reddish or coppery. Stature large. Hair long,
lank, coarse, black, round in cross-section. Nose large, bridged, or
aquiline. Cheek-bones moderately prominent. (Probably a branch of II.)
Examples: Indians of North and South America.
IV. _Caucasians._ Color pale or florid. Hair long, wavy or straight,
elliptical in cross-section. Nose large, straight or arched. Cheek-bones
small, unmarked. Examples: Hamitic, Semitic, and European peoples.
We may now imagine quite primitive human beings starting from their
early home and seeking their fortunes widely apart. They came under
quite different climatic and other physical conditions. Their
environment, problems, stimuli, and opportunities were unlike. Thus,
having become more or less unlike in the homeland, they gradually became
differentiated into the present great groups or races already mentioned.
Some started earlier or marched more rapidly than others. Many proved
unequal to the dangers and difficulties of the journey or new place of
settlement, and disappeared. Many stagnated or degenerated. Only the
comparatively successful or fortunate have survived. Hence, our scheme
is hardly an adequate expression of prehistoric racial groups and their
characteristics, except in very general outline.
We have seen that the apes, retreating before the approach of harsh and
dry climatic conditions and diminished forest areas and food supply,
migrated southward into India and Africa. The Orang settled in Borneo,
Pithecanthropus in Java, the Chimpanzee and Gorilla went into Africa.
These routes presented the fewest difficulties and demanded the least
readaptation or change of habit. The climate was mild and food
generally abundant and easily obtained. Their environment was neither
stimulating, trying, nor exacting. Progress was hardly to be expected,
but survival was far easier than in more northerly regions.
The Negritos followed almost exactly the same routes. We find them
purest and perhaps least modified in the "Pygmies" of the African
forests; but also in the Malay Peninsula, the Andaman Islands, and the
Philippines. De Morgan believes that he has found proofs of their
presence on the Iranian plateau at a comparatively late date.
Behind them Negroid peoples poured into Africa, apparently in successive
waves. Some of them went into the Malay Peninsula, probably generally
submerging the Negritos, and reached New Guinea and Australia.
Inhabiting a series of islands and other more or less isolated areas,
mingling often with Negritos, probably later also more or less with the
Malays, they became much modified, and their relations to the African
Negroes and to one another are still anything but clear.
The Mongoloids pushed eastward. The earliest migrations seem to be those
of the Malays, a great, very interesting, and little-known though
much-studied group of peoples. They followed the oceanic Negritos along
the Malay Peninsula and occupied the great chains of islands stretching
through the Indian Ocean and far into the Pacific, through more than
ninety degrees of longitude along the equator. But much of this spread
is probably of quite recent date.
The Mongoloid peoples seem to have passed along the northern front of
the Central Asiatic plateau into Siberia, China, and Japan, and to have
sent off the great American branch. Even before the Mongols had started
on their eastward journey the Caucasians may have turned westward,
following the old Negroid route. There was probably also more or less of
an eastern dispersal, but we cannot consider the problem of these
Oriental Caucasic remnants and traces. The great body went westward. The
Hamitic peoples distributed themselves along the southern shore of the
Mediterranean, and many may well have occupied a large part of the
Sahara region, then a land of watercourses capable of supporting a
large population. Behind them came the Semitic folk. Judging from their
languages the Hamitic and Semitic peoples seem to have been in contact
over a wide area, and for a long space of time. The Semites found a new
and permanent home in Arabia, on whose plateaus and surrounding
grasslands they increased and multiplied, and sent off fresh waves of
migration and conquest in all directions.
We have already noticed that our classification of races is based upon a
study of recent and still surviving peoples. The very earliest
inhabitants of Europe would find no place in it. Probably they long
antedated the Hamites. African Negroids and Caucasians came from a
common home, and journeyed for a time over a common road, though
probably at far different times. It would be strange if the earliest
inhabitants of Europe showed no traces of this common home and ancestry.
Since the remote period which we are considering Negroes and Caucasians
have become widely different, and their racial characters have become
clear and sharp. This may not have been altogether the case with the
first peoples to arrive in Europe. But attempts to relate the
Neanderthal crania with those of modern Australians or Tasmanians, or
any existing race, have met with no great success. In regard to these
questions we are still in the dark.
Beside the African routes into Europe, along the south shore of the
Mediterranean and over the Sicilian and Gibraltar land bridges, while
they lasted, two others must be noticed. One of these extended through
Asia Minor and across the land bridge at the Dardanelles, while the
second led westward along the northern border of the Caspian and Black
Seas and the Caucasus Mountains. The most southerly of these four routes
through Africa were probably the first to be travelled, the most
northerly last of all. We shall have to study these routes more closely
in a later chapter.
It was at some time during the Glacial period, the Great Ice Age, when a
vast ice-cap covered northern Europe with glaciers extending far
southward and advancing or retreating according to climatic conditions,
that man arrived in Europe. During the first Glacial Epoch the advance
of the ice covered the most northern part of Great Britain and the Rhine
valley almost as far south as Cologne; Scandinavia was completely
buried, like central Greenland to-day, and North Germany probably to the
Harz Mountains. Eastward the southern edge of the ice sheet ran nearly
along the line of 50° N. lat. across Russia. In Siberia the effects were
less marked and the limits were much farther northward. Between the
parallel of 50° and the northern edge of the Alpine glaciers a zone was
left ice-free, but three-fifths of Germany was overwhelmed. Southern
England and France, not yet separated by the English Channel, formed one
great habitable province, and but a small part of France was glaciated.
The climate was tempered by proximity to the sea.[17] The average yearly
temperature of northern Europe was probably not more than 4°-6° Cent.
(39°-43° Fahr.), which is colder than at present. But the formation of
these enormous masses of ice demanded heavy snowfall and a moist or very
damp climate. Hence the edge of the great ice sheet advanced or
retreated according to climatic conditions.
There were four periods of advance before the final retreat of the ice,
not counting minor oscillations.[18] These are known as the Gunz,
Mindel, Riss, and Wurm Glacial Epochs. Alternating with these were the
interglacial epochs of ice retreat--the Gunz-Mindel, Mindel-Riss, and
Riss-Wurm; while the final retreat is usually termed Post-glacial.
During the first and second interglacial epochs the climate appears to
have been warmer than at present. But at times dryness may have
contributed to the retreat of the ice even more than warmth, and then
the climate would have been continental, harsh, and extreme.
Even during epochs of glacial advance conditions in France and in the
German zone must have been better than we should expect. Some kind of
grazing or browsing pasturage must have been rich and abundant to
support large animals like the reindeer or even the woolly mammoths
characteristic of the second and third glacial epochs, which furnished
abundant food for prehistoric hunters. Farther south the glacial epochs
may well have been times of heavy rainfall, transforming the Sahara
desert and the dryer steppes and plateaus of Asia into veritable
gardens.
The retreating ice left behind it a land covered with rocks, clays,
gravels, and sands brought by the glaciers and their streams. Here and
there basins had been gouged out where lakes or ponds long remained--as
in Maine and Minnesota to-day--to be later drained, or, if shallow, to be
overgrown with sphagnum and changed into great bogs. Scattered thickets
of shrubs and stunted hardy trees, poplars, willows, and others
occurred. In sheltered and well-drained valleys and mountainsides the
trees grew larger and even forests began to appear. This tundra
landscape still characterizes wide areas of northern Canada and
Siberia.[19]
The tundra was followed by steppe conditions, where elevation of land to
the north and northwest had cut off the tempering oceanic winds. The
climate was harsh, dry, continental, with cold winters and hot summers.
The winds carried great storms of dust and piled it up in drifts in
valleys and on suitably situated mountainsides in the form of loess, so
important to the future agricultural development of Europe, though its
most massive accumulation is seen in China, which received and held the
driftings from the great elevated plains of central Asia. As the climate
became moister, if the temperature did not fall too low, steppe finally
gave way to the meadow and forest of modern Europe. Tundra, steppe, and
forest had each its special types of animal as well as plant life. The
characteristic tundra animal is the reindeer, though musk-ox, woolly
mammoth, and others were wide-spread at this time. The peculiar steppe
animal is the horse. The characteristic forest and meadow animals are
the deer and their allies; the wolf and bear; the wild boar and cattle
seem to be at home in forest and glade and along the streams.
In France, where there was far less glaciation, the succession of
tundra, steppe, and forest is less apparent. Here we find a mingling of
varied forms which have come in from very different regions, driven from
their original homes by change of climate or drawn by favorable
conditions.
The first unmistakable relic of man in Europe is a human lower jaw found
in the Mauer sands near Heidelberg, some seventy-nine feet below the
surface of the bluff.[20] It seems to belong to the second or
Mindel-Riss interglacial epoch, and its age is estimated by Osborn at
about 250,000 years. Remains characteristic of the oldest Paleolithic
epochs occur between thirty and forty-five feet below the surface. If we
are to find an archæological name for this epoch, there seems to be no
better one than Eolithic, the dawn of the Stone Age, when European man
had hardly more than begun to chip a stone implement, although we must
recognize the unreadiness of many or most archæologists to find a place
for such rude products.[21]
The third interglacial period (Riss-Wurm) and the fourth period of
advance (Wurm) cover what is known as Lower Paleolithic time, which is
the earlier four-fifths or more of the Old Stone Age or Paleolithic
period, extending approximately from 125,000 B. C., to 25,000 B. C.
During the greater part of this period Europe was occupied by the
Neanderthaloid people. Neanderthal man had a very large head with heavy,
overhanging eyebrows meeting above the nose, and a markedly retreating
forehead. The face was high and the large nasal opening indicates a
broad, flat nose. The lower jaw was heavy and the chin retreating. The
trunk was short, thick, and robust, the shoulders broad; the limbs short
and heavy, the arms and lower legs relatively short, and the hands very
large. Although the much-discussed Piltdown skull may quite probably be
regarded as belonging to the earliest part of this period, the finer
form of cranium seems to testify to a higher race of better mental
development than the Neanderthaloids, huddling in their caves and
shelters. It may easily represent a far more progressive ancestral race,
of which they are somewhat degenerate descendants, though Osborn
dissents from this view.[22]
Their remains are found in caves and rock-shelters all over Europe. Here
we find their hearths; the bones of the animals which they had hunted
for their food; their almond-shaped flint axes, "hand-stones"
(_Coups-de-Poing_), the scrapers for dressing skins and shaving wooden
tools, and a variety of other forms. Here they buried their dead. During
the third warm interglacial epoch they lived in the open, as at the
station of Chelles, which has given its name to the earliest Paleolithic
epoch.[23] Their origin and route of migration is quite uncertain, but
it seems probable that they entered Europe from the southern shore of
the Mediterranean.
The post-glacial period is characterized by the final retreat of the
ice. The change of climate was not steady but marked by a series of
oscillations, repeating on a much smaller scale the glacial and
interglacial epochs of the long past. The climatic change is accompanied
by the appearance of tundra and steppe, followed by meadows and the
forest conditions of modern times. Game was abundant and general
conditions severe but healthy and fairly favorable.
A new race has appeared on the scene which replaced the Neanderthal
folk, and had practically none of their primitive or degenerate,
ape-like characteristics.[24] The Cro-Magnon people have excited the
wonder and admiration of all anthropologists. They were of tall stature,
had long legs, especially below the knee, giving swiftness in running.
The forehead is broad and of good height, the features are rugged but
attractive, and the brain is very large. They seem to represent a new
race and new immigration, probably from Asia, which spread over Europe.
The Cro-Magnon brain was anything but dull. In this remote time, more
than 20,000 years ago, there sprang up an art never since surpassed in
its own field except, perhaps, by that of the Greeks. Their bone
implements are adorned with the most lifelike carvings or sculptures. On
the walls of caves we find paintings as realistic and alive, and often
as finely executed in detail and coloring, as the best animal painters
of our day could produce. These people must have had a high and keen
appreciation of the beauty of form and proportion. All this artistic
movement must have had its source in new ideas and conditions, springing
from a thinking as well as a feeling and observing mind. They also
frequently buried their dead, decorated with strings of perforated
shells, and surrounded by flints or sometimes by a layer of red earth or
ore. With them were the bones of food animals and the flint weapons
needed for the journey into or use in the life beyond.
The life of the Cro-Magnon hunters on their arrival in Europe was
anything but unendurable, especially along the Riviera. There were
open-air encampments where men passed at least the summer months in
tents or huts. The race seems to have culminated during the cold middle
Magdalenian epoch, which indicates that they were well adapted to its
conditions. Game was abundant and relatively easily captured. They had
food and raiment, fair shelter, excellent art, alert brains, and
probably a fair degree of social life. They may well have been content,
courageous, and full of hope for themselves and their descendants.
[Illustration: HUMAN FIGURES, SPAIN--EARLY NEOLITHIC]
[Illustration: DRAWINGS OF ANIMALS (CRO-MAGNON) FROM ALTAMIRA]
Upper Paleolithic time, beginning with the arrival of the Cro-Magnons,
about 25,000 years ago, is divided into four epochs, or, better,
four culture-stages: Aurignacian, Solutrean, Magdalenian, and
Azilian-Tardenoisian. Even in late Magdalenian days, after a cold and
dry interval accompanied by steppe conditions and a new formation of
loess, the air became moister and the temperature gradually moderated
until it became much like that of to-day. Tundra and steppe animals
became more rare; a forest and meadow fauna took possession of Europe.
Instead of the reindeer we find stag and roe-deer, cattle, wild boar,
bears and wolves, beaver and otter. These were less easily hunted and
probably less abundant than the reindeer and horse had been. As
hunting became less profitable, fishing grew more attractive. The
streams probably swarmed with fish, and the salmon was probably as
abundant throughout northern Europe as in Scandinavia to-day. A change
of life is suggested by the implements. The harpoons became ruder. The
beautifully flaked lance-heads and the smoothed bone daggers give place
to small flints, "microliths," less fitted for attacking large and
dangerous animals. The country seems to have supported a smaller and
decreasing population. Cro-Magnon man had always been a reindeer hunter,
accustomed and well adapted to the life and conditions of tundra or
steppe. The changes were not in his favor or to his liking. Many
probably left France and Germany. Those who remained deserted the
rock-shelters and cave-mouths, where every spring the water seeping down
and dripping through the roof dislodged masses of stone.[25] The shelter
was less needed. Men dwelt more in the open, and fewer records of their
presence were preserved.
But Europe was not deserted. There was no "hiatus." Other peoples were
coming in, perhaps better suited to the new conditions, probably mostly
of Asiatic origin. Broad-heads, as well as new long-heads, appear, less
attractive physically and mentally, but apparently of tougher fibre and
greater staying power than our more striking and charming
Cro-Magnons.[26] A new grand mingling of peoples had already begun or
was in its last stages of preparation already advancing from afar in
successive waves. In Italy genuine Neolithic culture may already have
been introduced. It steals very slowly into northern Europe and
overspreads it. The Cro-Magnon race generally migrated or died out, but
left its traces in the physical characters of the people of Dordogne and
elsewhere.
The Azilian-Tardenoisian epoch leads over to the Neolithic, our chief
object of study. Its relative position in prehistoric time is shown in
the following scheme:
_A._ _Eolithic Period._ Stone implements exceedingly rude, hardly
recognizable as artificially chipped; otherwise like _B_.
_B._ _Paleolithic Period._ Stone implements chipped or flaked, never
polished. No domesticated plants or animals. No pottery. Man a collector
or hunter, more rarely a fisherman.
_C._ _Transition Period_, resembling _B_ in most respects.
[_A_, _B_, and _C_ make up the Old Stone Age, before the use of metals.]
_D._ _Neolithic Period._ Some stone implements polished. No metal except
that copper is introduced toward the end of the period. Agriculture with
domestic plants and animals. Pottery but no potter's wheel. Dawn of
Civilization.
_E._ _Bronze Period._ Bronze implements or utensils. Dawn of History.
Begins about 2500 B. C. in northern Europe.
_F._ _Iron Period._ Iron introduced. Historic Times. Begins about 1000
B. C. in northern Europe.