THE EARLY NEANTHROPIC AGE
There has been much confusion among anthropologists respecting the
distinction of this from the preceding age. The Cro-magnon race has been
classed as neanthropic, and has been confounded with a very dissimilar
people which succeeded it after an interval of some duration. The gap
between the disappearance of the earlier race and the arrival of the
newer has thus been overlooked, and no account has been taken of the
great intervening faunal and geographical changes. This has arisen from
neglecting or being unable to appreciate the geological part of the
evidence; and the somewhat lamentable result has been that it is
difficult for the ordinary reader to arrive at any certainty, in the
midst of conflicting statements all based on imperfect data. In these
circumstances it will be well to begin this chapter with some examples
of the relations of these different races.
At Grenelle, near Paris, on the river Seine, there is a succession of
old inundation beds of that river, extending from the oldest part of
the anthropic to modern times, and furnishing what may be regarded as a
chronological series for Northern France, as many human remains have
been from time to time deposited on this old eddy of the Seine and
buried under newer accumulations. Belgrand has shown that in the lowest
gravels of this deposit the long-headed Canstadt man is alone found.
Immediately above this occur remains of the Cro-magnon type, and these
are associated with and overlain by beds holding large stones or erratic
blocks, a monument perhaps of the physical disturbances closing the
palanthropic age. Above these the next remains are those of a race of
men of smaller stature and with less elongated heads, which we shall
find belong to the neanthropic age. Here, as Quatrefages points out, we
have a distinct stratigraphical succession, which accords with that in
other localities.
If we now turn to England we may select from other examples the
Cresswell caves, so carefully explored by Dawkins and Mello, and in
which we have well-ascertained evidence from fossils as well as from
superposition. Without going into the details as to the several chambers
and passages in these caverns, we find as the result of the whole the
following succession in ascending order:
1. White calcareous sand, a deposit from water, but with no animal
remains.
2. Stiff red clay with blocks of limestone, and in places underlaid by a
ferruginous sand. These beds, of which the red clay is the principal,
contain bones of rhinoceros leptorhinus, hippopotamus, bison, bear,
hyena and fox, but no human remains. Dawkins, however, shows that in
other caves farther south some rude flint implements show that man had
already appeared in England, though he may not have made his way as far
north as Yorkshire.
3. Above this lies a stratum of red sandy cave earth, in which occur the
bones of the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros, the horse, the bison,
the bear, and the hyena, but the leptorhine rhinoceros is gone. The
bones are gnawed by hyenas, and there are rude quartzite implements.
Over this, and representing the later part of the palanthropic age,
corresponding to some of the French, Belgian, and Lebanon caves, are an
upper cave earth and breccia, rich in 'palæolithic' flint implements and
bones of the animals of the mammoth age.
4. Above this, in the surface soil and disturbed portions of the
underlying beds, are remains of the neanthropic period, including twelve
species of modern animals, but with no trace of the great extinct
quadrupeds. Connected with these were human skulls of the same type
found in the ancient burial barrows of England, and belonging to races
still extant. The Cresswell caves give no bones of palæocosmic men, but
they very well show the succession of the early period of mild climate,
the later severe climate, the extinction of the old animals contemporary
with the earliest men, and the final succession of modern men and
animals to the now insular Britain, which, in the times represented by
the beds one, two, and three above mentioned, was a part of the mainland
of Europe.
[Illustration: FLINT FLAKES OF TWO TYPES FROM PALANTHROPIC AND
NEANTHROPIC CAVES IN THE LEBANON]
But perhaps the most interesting views of the succession of early men
and the gap between the palanthropic and neanthropic periods are
presented by the Belgian caves explored by Schmerling and Dupont. The
latter has excavated more than sixty caverns, and has carefully noted
the mode of occurrence of their contents, collecting at the same time a
vast number of bones and implements, now admirably arranged in the
museum of Brussels. In Belgium the earlier anthropic period has been
characterised as that of the mammoth. The beginning of the neanthropic
is still a reindeer age, though that animal was apparently becoming
rare. It existed, as we know, in Central Europe till the time of Cæsar.
[Illustration: RESTORATION OF THE SEPULCHRAL CAVE OF FRONTAL, BELGIUM
(after Dupont)
1. and 2. Gravel and clay of mammoth age. 3. Surface of modern
accumulation of angular stones and clay. (D) Slab closing the sepulchre.
(S) Platform for funeral feasts. (F) Hearth. (R) Rock forming the walls
of the cavern.]
The caves of Furfooz, and especially that of Frontal, are among the most
instructive. Dupont has found that in many caves the older remains of
the mammoth age are contained in or covered by a diluvial or inundation
mud,[28] which seems to be the closing deposit of this age. Now in the
Frontal cave this mud remained undisturbed and extended out into a
platform in front of the cave. The cave itself had been used as a place
of burial, and as many as sixteen skeletons were found in it, with flint
implements, perforated shells, flat pieces of sandstone with sketches of
figures scratched on them, and an earthen vase. All these lay above the
original palanthropic mud floor, and belonged to new tribes which
probably knew nothing of their predecessors, whose bones were covered by
the inundation mud below. On the platform in front of the cave was a
hearth with the ashes of funeral feasts, and around this were found a
multitude of bones of animals, of the modern species of the country. The
people who used this cave as a sepulchre had evidently arrived in
Belgium after the palæocosmic men and the mammoth were not only extinct,
but their remains were buried in muddy deposits; though the reindeer
and even the wild horse still existed, and the time was long before the
dawn of any authentic history in that part of the world. These men have
somewhat shorter heads than the old Cro-magnon race, and they are of
smaller stature, and with finer and more delicate features. In these
respects they resemble the men of the dolmens and long barrows of France
and England, and the existing Auvergnats and Basques, and also the Lapps
of the far north. Dupont observes that their materials for implements
and ornaments came almost entirely from regions to the southward, and
hence he infers commerce with tribes in that direction and the existence
of enemies in the north. I should rather infer that the men of Frontal
had immigrated into Belgium from the south, and that they were a small
and poor outlying tribe of a greater people living south of them. Dupont
also remarks on their evident care of the dead, a characteristic of the
early neocosmic men, their belief in a future life, and the absence of
warlike weapons, whence he infers that they were a mild and pacific
race--a conclusion which makes against the idea entertained by some,
that they may have displaced the formidable palæocosmic men by conquest.
[28] Sometimes with angular stones--_argile à blocaux_.
Similar illustrations are afforded by the caves and rock-shelters of
France, Switzerland, and Syria, and have convinced many of the ablest
archæologists of the existence of a decided break between the
palanthropic and neanthropic ages. In such a case also it is to be
observed that a few decided, positive facts are of more value than any
number of examples in which, from local circumstances, the succession
may be obscure or uncertain.
The above examples relate to the men of the older neanthropic age, the
men of the so-called neolithic or polished stone age of archæologists.
These men can be shown to be identical with the oldest populations of
postdiluvian Europe, peoples whose descendants exist to-day in many
parts of Western Europe, though they have been more or less displaced or
mixed with later intrusive races. These people have gone on without any
physical cataclysm, or change of fauna, or geographical or climatal
changes of any magnitude, into the ages of bronze and iron and of the
modern civilisation. Thus, while the palæocosmic men passed away
abruptly and have left no certain successors, those who succeeded them
pass on without a break into the existing populations of the world.
We must, however, here guard ourselves from a misconception which has
apparently unconsciously deceived many writers on this subject. It by no
means follows from the facts insisted on above that there are no direct
links of connection between palæocosmic and neocosmic men. The ancestors
of the latter must have existed through the palanthropic period, and
wherever they were living they may have had the same characters which
distinguish them at a later time, and which persist to this day. There
would therefore be nothing contradictory to our general view in finding
that the small, fine-featured men who succeeded the giants of the olden
time were in some more genial parts of the world extant from the first.
Nay, it may even appear that they were similar to the Truchère race, and
that still more primitive people whose bones are yet unknown, and who
inhabited Europe in the early mild period preceding the mammoth age.
Neither is there anything anomalous in the occasional reappearance of
characters similar to those even of the Canstadt race at the present
time, not because any modern men are direct descendants of this race,
but because under certain conditions these characters tend to be
reproduced. Let us put the case conjecturally as follows:
The original men who peopled the northern continents after the first
glacial period were of small stature, agile, and well formed, with mild
and pleasing countenance and heads of the medium (mesitocephalic) type.
They were dwellers in a warm climate and subsisted on fruits. As
population increased and men became hunters and fishermen, and wandered
widely over the world, a large-boned, coarse-featured, and savage type
of man arose, such as we find in the older caves and gravels, and
weapons of kinds not needed in primitive times were invented. In this
state of affairs, when the coarser and stronger races had made
themselves masters of the world, and had perhaps partially intermixed
with the older and more peaceful peoples, a great diluvial catastrophe
occurred, which swept away the greater part of men. The survivors were
of the old and unmodified stock, and it was they who repeopled the new
world, finding possibly here and there some survivors of the former
population, or themselves locally relapsing into a similar state. In
this case all the seeming paradoxes and contradictions which have
perplexed archæologists would be easily explained. We might even find
occasional captives of the primitive small race among the interments of
the old giants, and we might find new races of superior physical power
arising in the new world and again intruding on the feebler race.
In closing our notice of this period we may proceed to connect it with
actual history in the British Islands. When the Romans invaded Britain
they found in it two races of men physically very distinct, one of them
the aborigines, who had made their way to the island as its first
population after the close of the mammoth age, the others apparently a
later intrusion. They are known to English antiquaries from their modes
of burial as the men of the long and the round barrows or funeral
mounds. The first of these are beyond doubt the kinsmen of our little
men of the Trou de Frontal, in Belgium. They are thus described by
Greenwell and Taylor[29]:
[29] Greenwell, _British Barrows_; Taylor, _Origin of the Aryans_.
They were of feeble build, short stature, dark complexion, and somewhat
long skull. They buried their dead in long barrows or mounds with
interior chambers and passages; some of these are as much as
400 feet in length, and resemble artificial caves; and there can be no
doubt that, as in Belgium, they buried their dead in caves when these
were accessible; and the laborious construction of the long barrows when
caves failed is an indication of the great importance they attached to
the secure and decent sepulture of the dead. No trace of metal is found
in their barrows, and but little pottery, but it is believed that they
had at a very early time domesticated sheep and cattle and practised
agriculture. These people are now identified with the people of the
south and west of England, called by the Romans Silures. They were the
builders of the cromlechs, dolmens, and other megalithic structures so
common in various parts of the old continent. Their type survives to
this day in the small dark people of parts of Wales and the south and
west of Ireland, and in parts of the Hebrides. Their physical characters
connect them with the primitive populations of the hills of Central
France, with the Basques of the Pyrenees, the Corsicans, the Berbers of
Africa, and the Guanches of the Canary Islands, and the term Iberian has
been applied to the whole group. Their language was originally not
Aryan, but Turanian. They represent not merely a new race still
surviving, but a distinct advance in practical civilisation over
that of the peoples of the palanthropic age, in Europe at least.
At the time of the Roman conquest this primitive race had been replaced
in the east of England and south of Scotland by a wholly different
people, supposed to be identical with the Celtæ of the Romans. They
were tall, muscular, with broader and shorter heads, fair complexion,
and light-coloured hair. They buried their dead in round barrows or
mounds, and seem at a very early period to have possessed bronze, and so
to have introduced what has been termed the bronze age into Britain. At
the time of the Roman invasion, however, they already possessed iron
weapons. These people were Aryan in speech, allied to the Gauls and
Belgæ, and the ancestors of the so-called Celtic populations of the
British Islands.
[Illustration: CROMLECH AT FONTANACCIA, CORSICA (after De Mortillet)]