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Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples
by The Marquis de Nadaillac
Translated by
Nancy Bell (N. D'Anvers)
Translator's Note
The present volume has been translated, with the author's consent,
from the French of the Marquis de Nadaillac. The author and translator
have carefully brought down to date the original edition, embodying
the discoveries made during the progress of the work. The book will
be found to be an epitome of all that is known on the subject of
which it treats, and covers ground not at present occupied by any
other work in the English language.
Nancy Bell (N. D'Anvers).
Southbourne-On-Sea,
1891.
Contents.
Chapter Page
I. The Stone Age, its Duration, and its Place in Time 1
II. Food, Cannibalism, Mammals, Fish, Hunting and Fishing,
Navigation 47
III. Weapons, Tools, Pottery; Origin of the Use of Fire, Clothing,
Ornaments; Early Artistic Efforts 79
IV. Caves, Kitchen-Middings, Lake Stations, "Terremares,"
Crannoges, Burghs, "Nurhags," "Talayoti," and "Truddhi" 127
V. Megalithic Monuments 174
VI. Industry, Commerce, Social Organization; Fights, Wounds and
Trepanation 231
VII. Camps, Fortifications, Vitrified Forts; Santorin; the Towns
upon the Hill of Hissarlik 279
VIII. Tombs 343
Index 383
Illustrations.
Figure Page
Fossil man from Mentone. FRONTISPIECE
1. Stone weapons described by Mahudel in 1734. 8
2. Copper hatchets found in Hungary and now in national museum
of Budapest. 20
3. Copper beads from Connett's Mound, Ohio (natural size). 21
4. Stone statues on Easter Island. 37
5. Fort-hill, Ohio. 39
6. Group of sepulchral mounds. 40
7. Ground plan of a pueblo of the Mac-Elmo valley. 41
8. Cliff-house on the Rio Mancos. 42
9. House in a rock of the Montezuma canon. 43
10.
1. Fragments of arrows made of reindeer horn from the Martinet
cave (Lot-et-Garonne).
2. Point of spear or harpoon in stag-horn (one third natural
size).
3. and 4. Bone weapons from Denmark.
5. Harpoon of stag-horn from St. Aubin.
6. Bone fish-hooks pointed at each end, from Waugen. 61
11. Bear's teeth converted into fish-hooks. 62
12. Fish-hook made out of a boar's tusk. 62
13.
A. Large barbed arrow from one side of the Plan Lade shelter
(Tarn-et-Garonne).
B. Lower part of a barbed harpoon from the Plantade deposit.
65
14. Ancient Scandinavian boat found beneath a tumulus at
Gogstadten. 73
15. Ancient boat discovered in the bed of the Cher. 75
16. A lake pirogue found in the Lake of Neuchatel.
1. As seen outside.
2. and 3. Longitudinal and transverse sections.
Stones used as anchors, found in the Bay of Penhouet. 76
17. 1, 2, 3. Stones weighing about 160 lbs. each.
4. and 5. Lighter stones, probably used for canoes. 80
18. Scraper from the Delaware valley. 82
19. Implement from the Delaware valley. 82
20. Worked flints from the Lafaye and Plantade shelters
(Tarn-et-Garonne). 83
21. 1. Stone javelin-head with handle. 2. Stone hatchet with
handle. 89
22. 1. Fine needles. 2. Coarse needles. 3. Amulet. 4 and
6. Ornaments. 5. Cut flints. 7. Fragment of a harpoon. 8. Fragments
of reindeer antlers with signs or drawings. 9. Whistle. 10. One end
of a bow (?). 11. Arrow-head. (From the Vache, Massat, and Lourdes
caves) 91
23. Amulet made of the penien bone of a bear and found in the
Marsoulas cave. 92
24. Various stone and bone objects from California. 93
25. Dipper found in the excavations at the Chassey camp. 95
26. Pottery of a so far unclassified type found in the Argent cave
(France). 98
27. 1. Lignite pendant. 2. Bone pendant. (Thayngen cave). 107
28. Round pieces of skull, pierced with holes (M. de Baye's
collection). 110
29.
Part of a rounded piece of a human parietal.
Stiletto made of the end of a human radius. 111
Disk, made of the burr of a stag's antler.
30. Whistle from the Massenat collection. 112
31. Staff of office. 113
32. Staff of office, made of stag-horn pierced with four holes.
114
33. Staff of office found at Lafaye.
34. Staff of office in reindeer antler, with a horse engraved on it
(Thayngen). 115
35. Staff of office found at Montgaudier. 117
36. Carved dagger-hilt (Laugerie-Basse). 118
37. The great cave-bear, drawn on a pebble found in the Massat cave
(Garrigou collection). 118
38. Mammoth or elephant from the Una cave. 119
39. Seal engraved on a bear's tooth, found at Sordes.
40. Fragment of a bone, with regular designs. Fragment of a rib
on which is engraved a musk-ox, found in the Marsoulas cave. 120
41. Head of a horse from the Thayngen cave. 121
42. Bear engraved on a bone, from the Thayngen cave. 121
43. Reindeer grazing, from the Thayngen cave. 122
44. Head of OVIBOS MOSCHATUS, engraved on wood, found in the
Thayngen cave. 123
45. Young man chasing the aurochs, from Laugerie. 124
46. Fragment of a staff of office, from the Madelaine cave. 125
47. Human face carved on a reindeer antler, found in the
Rochebertier cave. 125
48. The glyptodon. 128
49. MYLODON ROBUSTUS. 129
50. Objects discovered in the peat-bogs of Laybach, A. Earthenware
vase. B. Fragment of ornamented pottery. C. Bone needle. D. Earthenware
weight for fishing-net. E. Fragment of jaw bone. 152
51. Small terra-cotta figures found in the Laybach pile dwellings.
153
52. Small terra-cotta figures from the Laybach pile dwellings.
154
53. Nurhag at Santa Barbara (Sardinia). 168
54. "Talayoti" at Trepuco (Minorca). 170
55. Dolmen of Castle Wellan (Ireland). 175
56. The large dolmen of Careoro, near Plouharnel. 176
57. Dolmen of Arrayolos (Portugal). 177
58. Megalithic sepulchre at Acora (Peru). 178
59. The great broken menhir of Locmariaker with Caesar's table.
186
60. Covered avenue of Dissignac (Loire-Inferieure), view of the
chamber at the end of the north gallery. 189
61. Covered avenue near Antequera. 190
62. Ground plan of the Gavr'innis monument. 191
63. Monoliths at Stennis, in the Orkney Islands. 193
64. Cromlech near Bone (Algeria). 196
65. Dolmen at Pallicondah, near Madras (India). 201
66. Dolmen at Maintenon, with a table about 19 1/2 feet long.
204
67. Part of the Mane-Lud dolmen. 208
68. Sculptures on the menhirs of the covered avenue of Gavr'innis.
210
69. Dolmen with opening (India). 211
70. Dolmen near Trie (Oise). 212
71. Bronze objects found at Krasnojarsk (Siberia). 237
72. Prehistoric polisher near the ford of Beaumoulin, Nemours.
239
73. Section of a flint mine. 242
74. Plan of a gallery of flint mine. 243
75. Picks, hammers, and mattocks made of stag-horn. 245
76. Cranium of a woman from Cro-Magnon (full face). 249
77. Skull of a woman found at Sordes, showing a severe wound,
from which she recovered. 250
78. Fragment of human tibia with exostosis enclosing the end of
a flint arrow. 252
79. Fragment of human humerus pierced at the elbow joint (Trou
d'Argent). 253
80. Mesaticephalic skull, with wound which has been trepanned
259
81. Trepanned Peruvian skull. 268
82. Skull from the Bougon dolmen (Deux-Sevres), seen in profile
273
83. Trepanned prehistoric skull. 274
84. Prehistoric spoon and button found in a lake station at Sutz.
287
85. General view of the station of Fuente-Alamo. 293
86. Group at Liberty (Ohio). 299
87. Trenches at Juigalpa (Nicaragua). 300
88. Vases found at Santorin. 313
89. Vase ending in the snout of an animal, found on the hill
of Hissarlik. 325
90. Funeral vase containing human ashes. 326
91. Large terra-cotta vases found at Troy. 327
92. Earthenware pitcher found at a depth of 19 1/2 feet. 328
93. Vase found beneath the ruins of Troy.
94. Terra-cotta vase found with the treasure of Priam.
95. Vase found beneath the ruins of Troy. 329
96. Earthenware pig found at a depth of 13 feet. 330
97. Vase surmounted by an owl's head, found beneath the ruins
of Troy. 331
98. Copper vases found at Troy. 333
99. Vases of gold and electrum, with two ingots (Troy). 334
100. Gold and silver objects from the treasure of Priam. 335
101. Gold ear-rings, head-dress, and necklace of golden beads from
the treasure of Priam. 336
102. Terra-cotta fusaioles. 339
103. Cover of a vase with the symbol of the swastika. 340
104. Stone hammer from New Jersey bearing an undeciphered inscription.
341
105. Chulpa near Palca. 357
106. Dolmen at Auvernier near the lake of Neuchatel. 359
107. A stone chest used as a sepulchre. 361
108. Example of burial in a jar. 363
109. Aymara mummy. 365
110. Peruvian mummies. 367
111. Erratic block from Scania, covered with carvings. 379
112. Engraved rock from Massibert (Lozere). 380
CHAPTER I
The Stone Age: its Duration and its Place in Time.
The nineteenth century, now nearing its close, has made an indelible
impression upon the history of the world, and never were greater things
accomplished with more marvellous rapidity. Every branch of science,
without exception, has shared in this progress, and to it the daily
accumulating information respecting different parts of the globe
bas greatly contributed. Regions, previously completely closed, have
been, so to speak, simultaneously opened by the energy of explorers,
who, like Livingstone, Stanley, and Nordenskiold, have won immortal
renown. In Africa, the Soudan, and the equatorial regions, where the
sources of the Nile lie hidden; in Asia, the interior of Arabia, and
the Hindoo Koosh or Pamir mountains, have been visited and explored. In
America whole districts but yesterday inaccessible are now intersected
by railways, whilst in the other hemisphere Australia and the islands
of Polynesia have been colonized; new societies have rapidly sprung
into being, and even the unmelting ice of the polar regions no longer
checks the advance of the intrepid explorer. And all this is but a
small portion of the work on which the present generation may justly
pride itself.
Distant wars too have contributed in no small measure to the progress
of science. To the victorious march of the French army we owe the
discovery of new facts relative to the ancient history of Algeria;
it was the advance of the English and Russian forces that revealed
the secret of the mysterious lands in the heart of Asia, whence many
scholars believe the European races to have first issued, and of this
ever open book the French expedition to Tonquin may be considered at
present one of the last pages.
Geographical knowledge does much to promote the progress of the
kindred sciences. The work of Champollion, so brilliantly supplemented
by the Vicomte de Rouge and Mariette Bey, has led to the accurate
classification of the monuments of Egypt. The deciphering of the
cuneiform inscriptions has given us the dates of the palaces of Nineveh
and Babylon; the interpretation by savants of other inscriptions has
made known to us those Hittites whose formidable power at one time
extended as far as the Mediterranean, but whose name had until quite
recently fallen into complete oblivion. The rock-hewn temples and
the yet more strange dagobas of India now belong to science. Like
the sacred monuments of Burmah and Cambodia they have been brought
down to comparatively recent dates; and though the palaces of Yucatan
and Peru still maintain their reserve, we are able to fix their dates
approximately, and to show that long before their construction North
America was inhabited by races, one of which, known as the Mound
Builders, left behind them gigantic earthworks of many kinds, whilst
another, known as the Cliff Dwellers, built for themselves houses on
the face of all but inaccessible rocks.
Comparative philology has enabled us to trace back the genealogies
of races, to determine their origin, and to follow their
migrations. Burnouf has brought to light the ancient Zend language,
Sir Henry Rawlinson and Oppert have by their magnificent works opened
up new methods of research, Max Muller and Pictet in their turn by
availing themselves of the most diverse materials have done much to
make known to us the Aryan race, the great educator, if I may so speak,
of modern nations.
To one great fact do all the most ancient epochs of history bear
witness: one and all, they prove the existence in a yet more remote
past of an already advanced civilization such as could only have been
gradually attained to after long and arduous groping. Who were the
inaugurators of this civilization? Who ware the earliest inhabitants of
the earth? To what biological conditions were they subject? What were
the physical and climatic conditions of the globe when they lived? By
what flora and fauna were they surrounded? But science pushes her
inquiry yet further. She desires to know the origin of tire human
race, when, how, and why men first appeared upon the earth; for from
whatever point of view he is considered, man must of necessity have
had a beginning.
We are in fact face to face with most formidable problems, involving
alike our past and future; problems it is hopeless to attempt to solve
by human means or by the help of human intelligence alone, yet with
which science can and ought to grapple, for they elevate the soul and
strengthen the reasoning faculties. Whatever may be their final result,
such studies are of enthralling interest. "Man," said a learned member
of the French Institute, "will ever be for man the grandest of all
mysteries, the most absorbing of all objects of contemplation."[1]
Let us work our way back through past centuries and study our remote
ancestors on their first arrival upon earth; let us watch their early
struggles for existence! We will deal with facts alone; we will accept
no theories, and we must, alas, often fail to come to any conclusion,
for the present state of prehistoric knowledge rarely admits of
certainty. We must ever be ready to modify theories by the study
of facts, and never forget that, in a science so little advanced,
theories must of necessity be provisional and variable.
Truly strange is the starting-point of prehistoric science. It is with
the aid. of a few scarcely even rough-hewn flints, a few bones that
it is difficult to classify, and a few rude stone monuments that we
have to build up, it must be for our readers to say with what success,
a past long prior to any written history, which has left no trace in
the memory of man, and during which our globe would appeal to have
been subject to conditions wholly unlike those of the present day.
The stones which will first claim our attention, some of them
very skilfully cut and carefully polished, have been known for
centuries. According to Suetonius, the Emperor Augustus possessed
in his palace on the Palatine Hill a considerable collection of
hatchets of different kinds of rock, nearly all of them found in the
island of Capri, and which were to their royal owner the weapons of
the heroes of mythology. Pliny tells of a thunder-bolt having fallen
into a lake, in which eighty-nine of these wonderful stones were soon
afterwards found.[2] Prudentius represents ancient German warriors
as wearing gleaming CERAUNIA on their helmets; in other countries
similar stones ornamented the statues of the gods, and formed rays
about their heads.[3]
A subject so calculated to fire the imagination has of course not
been neglected by the poets. Claudian's verses are well known:
Pyrenaeisque sub antris
Ignea flumineae legere ceraunia nymphae.
Marbodius, Bishop of Rennes, in the eleventh century, sang of the
thunder-stones in some Latin verses which have come down to us,
and an old poet of the sixteenth century in his turn exclaimed,
on seeing the strange bones around him
Le roc de Tarascon hebergea quelquefois
Les geants qui couroyent les montagnes de Foix,
Dont tant d'os successifs rendent le temoignage.
With these stones, in fact, were found numerous bones of great size,
which had belonged to unknown creatures. Latin authors speak of similar
bones found in Asia Minor, which they took to be those of giants of an
extinct race. This belief was long maintained; in 1547 and again in
1667 fossil remains were found in the cave of San Ciro near Palermo;
and Italian savants decided that they had belonged to men eighteen feet
high. Guicciadunus speaks of the bones of huge elephants carefully
preserved in the Hotel de Ville at Antwerp as the bones of a giant
named Donon, who lived 1300 years before the Christian era.
In days nearer our own the roost cultivated people accepted the remains
of a gigantic batrachian[4] as those of a man who had witnessed the
flood, and it was the same with a tortoise found in Italy scarcely
thirty years ago. Dr. Carl, in a work published at Frankfort[5] in
1709, took up another theory, and, such was the general ignorance
at the time, he used long arguments to prove that the fossil bones
were the result neither of a freak of nature, nor of the action of
a plastic force, and it was not until near the end of his life that
the illustrious Camper could bring himself to admit the extinction
of certain species, so totally against Divine revelation did such a
phenomenon appear to him to be.
Prejudices were not, however, always so obstinate. For more than three
centuries stones worked by the hand of man have been preserved in the
Museum of the Vatican, and as long ago as the time of Clement VIII. his
doctor, Mercati, declared these stones to have been the weapons of
antediluvians who had been still ignorant of the use of metals.
During the early portion of the eighteenth century a pointed black
flint, evidently the head of a spear, was found in London with the
tooth of an elephant. It was described in the newspapers of the day,
and placed in the British Museum.
In 1723 Antoine de Jussieu said, at a meeting of the ACADEMIE DES
SCIENCES, that these worked stones had been made where they were found,
or brought from distant countries. He supported his arguments by an
excellent example of the way in which savage races still polish stones,
by rubbing them continuously together.
A few years later the members of the ACADEMIE DES INSCRIPTIONS in
their turn, took up the question, and Mahudel, one of its members,
in presenting several stones, showed that they bad evidently been
cut by the hand of man. "An examination of them," he said, "affords
a proof of the efforts of our earliest ancestors to provide for their
wants, and to obtain the necessaries of life." He added that after the
re-peopling of the earth after the deluge, men were ignorant of the use
of metals. Mahudel's essay is illustrated by drawings, some of which
we reproduce (Fig. 1), showing wedges, hammers, hatchets, and flint
arrow-beads taken, he tells us, from various private collections.[6]
Bishop Lyttelton, writing in 1736, speaks of such weapons as having
been made at a remote date by savages ignorant of the use of metals,[7]
and Sir W. Dugdale, an eminent antiquary of the seventeenth century,
attributed to the ancient Britons some flint hatchets found in
Warwickshire, and thinks they were made when these weapons alone
were used.[8]
FIGURE 1
Stone weapons described by Mahudel in 1734.
A communication made by Frere to the Royal Society of London deserves
mention here with a few supplementary remarks.[9]
This distinguished man of science found at Hoxne, in Suffolk, about
twelve feet below the surface of the soil, worked flints, which had
evidently been the natural weapons of a people who had no knowledge
of metals. With these flints were found some strange bones with the
gigantic jaw of an animal then unknown. Frere adds that the number
of chips of flint was so great that the workmen, ignorant of their
scientific value, used them in road-making. Every thing pointed to
the conclusion that Hoxne was the place where this primitive people
manufactured the weapons and implements they used, so that as early as
the end of last century a member of the Royal Society formulated the
propositions,[10] now fully accepted, that at a very remote epoch men
used nothing but stone weapons and implements, and that side by side
with these men lived huge animals unknown in historic times. These
facts, strange as they appear to us, attracted no attention at the
time. It would seem that special acumen is needed for every fresh
discovery, and that until the time for that discovery comes, evidence
remains unheeded and science is altogether blind to its significance.
But to resume our narrative. It is interesting to note the various
phases through which the matter passed before the problem was
solved. In 1819, M. Jouannet announced that he had found stone weapons
near Perigord. In 1823, the Rev. Dr. Buckland published the "Reliquiae
Diluvianae," the value of which, though it is a work of undoubted
merit, was greatly lessened by the preconceived ideas of its author. A
few years later, Tournal announced his discoveries in the cave of Bize,
near Narbonne, in which, mixed with human bones, he found the remains
of various animals, some extinct, some still native to the district,
together with worked flints and fragments of pottery. After this,
Tournal maintained that man had been the contemporary of the animals
the bones of which were mixed with the products of human industry.[11]
The results of the celebrated researches of Dr. Schmerling in the
caves near Liege were published in 1833. He states his conclusions
frankly: "The shape of the flints," he says, "is so regular, that
it is impossible to confound them with those found in the Chalk or
in Tertiary strata. Reflection compels us to admit that these flints
were worked by the hand of man, and that they may have been used as
arrows or as knives."[12] Schmerling does not refer, though Lyell does,
and that in terms of high admiration, to the courage required for the
arduous work involved in the exploration of the caves referred to,
or to the yet more serious obstacles the professor had to overcome
in publishing conclusions opposed to the official science of the day.
In 1835, M. Joly, by his excavations in the Nabrigas cave, established
the contemporaneity of man with the cave bear, and a little later
M. Pomel announced his belief that plan had witnessed the last
eruptions of the volcanoes of Auvergne.
In spite of these discoveries, and the eager discussions to which
they led, the question of the antiquity of man and of his presence
amongst the great Quaternary animals made but little progress, and
it was reserved to a Frenchman, M. Boucher de Perthes, to compel the
scientific world to accept the truth.
It was in 1826 that Boucher de Perthes first published his opinion;
but it was not until 1816 and 1847 that he announced his discovery
at Menchecourt, near Abbeville, and at Moulin-Quignon and Saint
Acheul, in the alluvial deposits of the Somme, of flints shaped
into the form of hatchets associated with the remains of extinct
animals such as the mammoth, the cave lion, the RHINOCEROS INCISIVUS,
the hippopotamus, and other animals whose presence in France is not
alluded to either in history or tradition. The uniformity of shape,
the marks of repeated chipping, and the sharp edges so noticeable in
the greater number of these hatchets, cannot be sufficiently accounted
for either by the action of water, or the rubbing against each other
of the stones, still less ply the mechanical work of glaciers. We
must therefore recognize in them the results of some deliberate
action and of an intelligent will, such as is possessed by man, and
by man alone. Professor Ramsay[13] tells us that, after twenty years'
experience in examining stones in their natural condition and others
fashioned by the hand of man, he has no hesitation in pronouncing
the flints and hatchets of Amiens and Abbeville as decidedly works of
art as the knives of Sheffield. The deposits in which they were found
showed no sins of having been disturbed; so that we may confidently
conclude that the men who worked these flints lived where the banks
of the Somme now are, when these deposits were in course of being
laid down, and that he was the contemporary of the animals whose
bones lay side by side with the products of his industry.
This conclusion, which now appears so simple, was not accepted without
difficulty. Boucher de Perthes defended his discoveries in books,
in pamphlets, and in letters addressed to learned societies. He
had the courage of his convictions, and the perseverance which
insures success. For twenty years he contended patiently against
the indifference of some, and the contempt of others. Everywhere the
proofs he brought forward were rejected, without his being allowed
the honor of a discussion or even of a hearing. The earliest converts
to De Perthes' conclusions met with similar attacks and with similar
indifference. There is nothing to surprise us in this; it is human
nature not to take readily to anything new, or to entertain ideas
opposed to old established traditions. The most distinguished men
find it difficult to break with the prejudices of their education
and the yet more firmly established prejudices of the systems they
have themselves built up. The words of the great French fabulist will
never cease to be true:
Man is ice to truth;
But fire to lies.
One of the masters of modern science, Cuvier, has said[14]: "Everything
tends to prove that the human race did not exist in the countries
where the fossil bones were found at the time of the convulsions
which buried those bones; but I will not therefore conclude that man
did not exist at all before that epoch; he may have inherited certain
districts of small extent whence he re-peopled the earth after these
terrible events." Cuvier's disciples went beyond the doctrines of
their master. He made certain reservations; they admitted none, and
one of the most illustrious, Elie de Beaumont, rejected with scorn the
possibility of the co-existence of man and the mammoth.[15] Later,
retracting an assertion of which perhaps he himself recognized the
exaggeration, he contented himself with saying that the district where
the flints and bones had been collected belonged to a recent period,
and to the shifting deposits of the slopes contemporary with the peaty
alluvium. He added -- scientific passions are by no means the least
intense, or the least deeply rooted -- that the worked flints may
have been of Roman origin, and that the deposits of Moulin-Quignon may
have covered a Roman road! This might indeed have been the case in the
DEPARTEMENT DU NORD, where a road laid down by the conquerors of Gaul
has completely disappeared beneath deposits of peat, but it could not
be true at Moulin-Quignon, where gravels form the culminating point
of the ridge. Moreover, the laying down of the most ancient peats
of the French valleys did not begin until the great watercourses had
been replaced by the rivers of the present day; they never contain,
relics of any species but such as are still extant; whereas it was
with the remains of extinct mammals that the flints were found.
It was against powerful adversaries such as this that the modest
savant of Abbeville had to maintain his opinion. "No one," he says,
"cared to verify the facts of the case, merely giving as a reason,
that these facts were impossible." Weight was added to his complaint
by the refusal in England about the same blue to print a communication
from the Society of Natural History of Torquay, which announced the
discovery of flints worked by the hand of man, associated, as were
those of the Somme, with the bones of extinct animals. The fact
appeared altogether too incredible!
But the time when justice would be done was to come at
last. Dr. Falconer visited first Amiens and then Abbeville, to
examine the deposits and the flints and bones found in them. In
January, 1859, and in 1860, other Englishmen of science followed
his example; and excavations were made, under their direction, in
the massive strata which rise, from the chalk forming their base,
to a height of 108 feet above the level of the Somme. Their search
was crowned with success, and they lost no blue in leaking known to
the world the results they had obtained, and the convictions to which
these results lead led.[16] In 1859 Prestwich announced to the Royal
Society of London that the flints found in the bed of the Somme were
undoubtedly the work of the hand of plan, that they had been found in
strata that lead not been disturbed, and that the men who cut these
flints bad lived at a period prior to the time when our earth assumed
its present configuration. Sir Charles Lyell, in his opening address at
a session of the British Association, did not hesitate to support the
conclusions of Prestwich. It was now the turn of Frenchmen of science
to arrive at Abbeville. MM. Gaudry and Pouchet themselves extracted
hatchets from the Quaternary deposits of the Somme.[17] These facts
were vouched for by the well-known authority, M. de Quatrefages,
who had already constituted himself their advocate. All that was now
needed was the test of a public discussion, and the meeting of the
Anthropological Society of Paris supplied a suitable occasion. The
question received long and searching scientific examination. All doubt
was removed, and M. Isidore Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire was the mouth-piece
of an immense majority of his colleagues, when he declared that the
objections to the great antiquity of the human race had all melted
away. The conversion of men so illustrious was followed of course by
that of the general public, and, more fortunate than many another,
Boucher de Perthes bad the satisfaction before his death of seeing a
new branch of knowledge founded on his discoveries, attain to a just
and durable popularity in the scientific world.
It must not, however, be supposed that popular superstition yielded
at once to the decisions of science, and it is curious to meet with
the same ideas in the most different climates, and in districts
widely separated from each other:[18] Everywhere worked flints are
attributed to a supernatural origin; everywhere they are looked upon
as amulets with the power of protecting their owner, his house or his
flocks. Russian peasants believe them to be the arrows of thunder,
and fathers transmit them to their children as precious heirlooms. The
same belief is held in France, Ireland, and Scotland, in Scandinavia,
and Hungary, as well as in Asia Minor, in Japan, China, and Burn lap;
in Java, and amongst the people of the Bahama Islands, as amongst
the negroes of the Soudan or those of the west coast of Africa,[19]
who look upon these stones as bolts launched from Heaven by Sango,
the god of thunder; amongst the ancient inhabitants of Nicaragua as
well as the Malays, who, however, still make similar implements.
The name given to these flints recalls the origin attributed to
them. The Romans call them CERAUNIA from keraun'oc, thunder, and in
the catalogue of the possessions of a noble Veronese published in
1656, we find them mentioned under this name.[20] Every one knows
Cymbeline's funeral chant in Shakespeare's play:
Fear no more the lightning flash
Nor the all dreaded thunder-stone.
In Germany we are shown DONNER-KEILE, in Alsace DORMER-AXT, in Holland
DONNER-BEITELS, in Denmark TORDENSTEEN, in Norway TORDENKEILE,
in Sweden THORSOGGAR, Thor having been the god of thunder amongst
northern nations; while with the Celts[21] the MENGURUN, in Asia Minor
the YLDERIM-TACHI, in Japan the RAI-FU-SEKI-NO-RUI, in Roussillon
the PEDRUS DE LAMP, and in Andalusia the PIEDRAS DE RAYO have the
same signification. The inhabitants of the Mindanao islands call
these stones the teeth of the thunder animal, and the Japanese the
teeth of the thunder.[22] In Cambodia, worked stones, celts, adzes,
and gouges or knives, are known as thunder stones. A Chinese emperor,
who lived in the eighth century of our era, received from a Buddhist
priest some valuable presents which the donors said had been sent
by the Lord of Heaven, amongst which were two flint hatchets called
LOUI-KONG, or stones of the god of thunder. In Brazil we meet with
the same idea in the name of CORSICO, or lightnings, given to worked
flints; whilst in Italy, by all exception almost unique, they are
called LINGUE SAN PAOLO.
May we not also attribute to the worship of stones some of the
religious and funeral rites of antiquity? According to Porphyry,
Pythagoras, on his arrival on the island of Crete, was purified with
thunder-stones by the dactyl priests of Mount Ida. The Etruscans wore
flint arrow-heads on their collars. They were sought after by the Magi,
and the Indians gave them an honored place in their temples. According
to Herodotus, the Arabs sealed their engagements by making an incision
in their hands with a sharp stone; in Egypt the body of a corpse before
being embalmed was opened with a flint knife; a similar implement
was used by the Hebrews for the rite of circumcision; and it was also
with cut stones that the priests of Cybele inflicted self-mutilation
in memory of that of Atys. At Rome the stone hatchet was dedicated to
Jupiter Latialis, and solemn treaties were ratified by the sacrifice
of a pig, the throat of which was cut with a sharp flint. According
to Virgil, this custom was handed down to the ancient Romans by the
uncouth nation of the Equicoles. At the beginning of the Christian
era., the heroes commemorated by Ossian still had in the centre
of their shields a polished stone consecrated by the Druids, and a
saga maintains that the CERAUNIA assured certain victory to their
owners. On the other side of the Atlantic, the Aztecs used obsidian
blades for the sacrifices, in which hundreds of human victims perished
miserably; and similar blades are used by the Guanches of Teneriffe
to open the bodies of their chiefs after death. At the present day,
the Albanian Palikares use pointed flints to cut the flesh off the
shoulder-blade of a sheep with a view to seeking in its fibres the
secrets of the future, and when the god Gimawong visits his temple
of Labode, on the western coast of Africa, his worshippers offer
him a bull slain with a stone knife. Lumholtz,[23] in the second of
his recent explorations in Queensland, tells us that the natives
still use stone weapons, varying in form and in the handles used,
and that the weapons of the Australians living near Darling River,
as well as those of the Tasmanians, are without handles.
During the first centuries of the Christian era, strange rites were
still performed in honor of dolmens and menhirs. The councils of the
Church condemned them, and the emperors and kings supported by their
authority the decrees of the ecclesiastics.[24] Childebert in 554,
Carloman in 742, Charlemagne by an edict issued at Aix-la-Chapelle
in 789,[25] forbid their subjects to practise these rites borrowed
from heathenism. But popes and emperors are alike powerless in
this direction, and one generation transmits its traditions and
superstitions to another. In the seventeenth century a Protestant
missionary called in the aid of the secular arm to destroy a
superstition deeply rooted in the minds of his people; in England,
sorcerers were proceeded against for having used flint arrow-heads
in their pretended witchcraft; in Sweden, a polished hatchet
yeas placed in the bed of women in the pangs of labor; in Burmah,
thunder-stones reduced to powder were looked upon as an infallible
cure for ophthalmia; and the Canaches have a collection of stones with
a special superstition connected with each. But why seek examples
so far away and in a past so remote? In our own day anti in our own
land we find men who think themselves invulnerable and their cattle
safe if they are fortunate enough to possess a polished flint.
Prehistoric times are generally divided into three epochs -- the STONE
AGE, the BRONZE AGE, and the IRON AGE. We owe this classification to
the archaeologists of Northern Europe.[26] It is neither very exact
nor very satisfactory, and fresh discoveries daily tend to unsettle
it.[27] Alsberg maintained that iron was the first metal used,
founding his contention on the scarcity of tin, the difficulty of
obtaining alloys, and on the sixty-one iron foundries of Switzerland
which may date from prehistoric times. The rarity of the discovery of
iron objects, he urged, is accounted for by the ease with which such
objects are destroyed by rust. There has never been a Bronze or an
Iron age in America, so that it would seem very doubtful whether all
races went through the same cycles of development. I myself prefer
the division into the PALAEOLITHIC period, when men only used roughly
chipped stones, and the NEOLITHIC period, when they carefully polished
their stone weapons. "There may," says Alexander Bertrand,[28] "be one
immutable law for the succession of strata throughout the entire crust
of the earth, but there is no corresponding law applicable to human
agglomerations or to the succession of the strata of civilization. It
would be a very grave error to adopt the theory according to which
all human races have passed through the same phases of development
and have gone through the same complete series of social conditions."
FIGURE 2
Copper hatchets found in Hungary, and now in the National Museum
of Budapest.
It may perhaps be convenient to introduce a fourth period when copper
alone was used and our ancestors were still ignorant of the alloys
necessary for the production of bronze. Hesiod speaks of a third
generation of men as possessing copper only, and although it does not
do to attach undue importance to isolated facts, recent discoveries in
the Cevennes, in Spain, in Hungary, and elsewhere, appear to confirm
the existence of an age of copper (Fig. 2). We may add that the mounds
of North America contain none but copper implements and ornaments,
witnesses of a time when that metal alone was known either on the
shores of the Atlantic or of the Pacific[29] (Fig. 3).
FIGURE 3
Copper beads, from Connett's Mound, Ohio (natural size).
It is impossible to fix the duration of the Stone age. It began with
man, it lasted for countless centuries, and we find it still prevailing
amongst certain races who set their faces against all progress. The
scenes sculptured upon Egyptian monuments dating from the ancient
Empire represent the employment of stone weapons, and their use was
continued throughout the time of the Lagidae and even into that of
the Roman domination. A few years ago, on the shores of the Nile, I
saw some of the common people shave their heads with stone razors, and
the Bedouins of Gournah using spears headed with pointed flints. The
Ethiopians in the suite of Xerxes had none but stone weapons, and
yet their civilization was several centuries older than that of the
Persians. The excavations on the site of Alesia yielded many stone
weapons, the glorious relics of the soldiers of Vercingetorix. At
Mount Beuvray, on the site of Bibracte, flint hatchets and weapons
have been discovered associated with Gallic coins. At Rome, M. de
Rossi collected similar objects mixed with the AES RUDE. Flint
hatchets are mentioned in the life of St. Eloy, written by St. Owen,
and the Merovingian tombs have yielded hundreds of small cut flints,
the last offerings to the dead. William of Poitiers tells us that
the English used stone weapons at the battle of Hastings in 1066, and
the Scots led by Wallace did the same as late as 1288. Not until many
centuries after the beginning of the Christian era did the Sarmatians
know the use of metals; and in the fourteenth century we find a race,
probably of African origin, making their hatchets, knives, and arrows
of stone, and tipping their javelins with horn. The Japanese, moreover,
used stone weapons and implements until the ninth and even the tenth
century A.D.
But there is no need to go back to the past for examples. The Mexicans
of the present day use obsidian hatchets, as their fathers did before
them; the Esquimaux use nephritis and jade weapons with Remington
rifles. Nordenskiold tells us that the Tchoutchis know of no weapons
but those made of stone; that they show their artistic feeling in
engravings on bone, very similar to those found in the caves of the
south of France. In 1854, the Mqhavi, an Indian tribe of the Rio
Colorado (California), possessed no metal objects; and it is the
same with the dwellers on the banks of the Shingle River (Brazil),
the Oyacoulets of French Guiana, and many other wandering and savage
races. Pere Pelitot tells us that the natives living on the banks of
the Mackenzie River are still in the stone age; and Schumacker has
given an interesting example of the manufacture of stone weapons
by the Klamath Indians dwelling on the shores of the Pacific. It
has been justly said: "The Stone age is not a fixed period in time,
but one phase of the development of the human race, the duration of
which varies according to the environment and the race."[30]
In thus limiting our idea of the stone age, we may conclude that alike
in Europe and in America,[31] there has been a period when metal was
entirely unknown, when stones were the sole weapons, the sole tools
of man, when the cave, for which he had to dispute possession with
bears and other beasts of prey, was his sole and precarious refuge,
and when clumsy heaps of stones served alike as temples for the
worship of his gods and sepulchral monuments in honor of his chiefs.
Excavations in every department of France have yielded thousands of
worked flints, and there are few more interesting studies than an
examination of the mural map in the Saint Germain Museum on which
are marked with scrupulous exactitude the dwelling-places of our
most remote ancestors, and the megalithic monuments which are the
indestructible memorials of our forefathers.
In the Crimea were picked up a number of small flints cut into the
shape of a crescent exactly like those found in the Indies and in
Tunis, and the Anthropological Society of Moscow has introduced us
to a Stone age the memory of which is preserved in the tumuli of
Russia. On the shores of Lake Lagoda have been found some implements
of argillaceous schist, in Carelia and in Finland tools made of
slate and schist, often adorned with clumsy figures of men or of
animals. The rigor of the climate did not check the development
of the human race; in the most remote times Lapland, Nordland, the
most northerly districts of Scandinavia, and even the bitterly cold
Iceland, were peopled. The Exhibition of Paris, 1878, contained some
stone weapons found on the shores of the White Sea.
On several parts of the coast of Denmark we meet with mounds of an
elliptical shape and about nine feet high, with a hollow in the centre,
marking the site of a prehistoric dwelling. It was not until about
1850 that the true nature of these mounds was determined. Excavations
in them have brought to light knives, hatchets, all manner of stone,
horn, and bone implements, fragments of pottery, charred wood, with
the bones of mammals and birds, the skeletons of fishes, the shells of
oysters and cockles buried beneath the ashes of ancient hearths. To
these accumulations the characteristic name of KITCHENMIDDINGS,
or kitchen refuse, has been given.
Several caves have recently been examined in Poland, one of which,
situated near Cracow, appears to belong to Palaeolithic times. Count
Zawiska has already given an account of his interesting discoveries
to the Prehistoric Congress at Stockholm. In the Wirzchow cave he
identified seven different hearths, and took out of the accumulations
of cinders various amulets, clumsy representations of fish cut in
ivory, split bones, bears', wolves', and elks' teeth pierced with a
hole for threading, and more than four thousand stone objects of a
similar type to those found in Russia, Scandinavia, and Germany. We
meet with similar traces of successive habitation in a cave near Ojcow;
the valuable contents of which included some beautiful flint tools,
some awls, bone spatulae, and some gold ornaments, mixed, in the lower
of the hearths, with the bones of extinct animals, and in the upper,
with those of species still living.
The discoveries made in the Atter See and in the Salzburg lakes with
those in the Moravian caves prove what had previously been very stoutly
denied, the existence in those districts of ancient races at a very
remote date.
The most ancient inhabitants of Hungary, however, cannot be traced
further back than to Neolithic times. In that country have been found,
with polished stone implements, thousands of objects made of stag-horn,
or bone, almost all without exception finely finished off. The
discovery of copper tools and ornaments of a peculiar form in the
Danubian provinces, bears witness to a distinct civilization in those
districts, and confirms what we have just said about a Copper age.
From the Lake Stations of Austria and Hungary, we pass naturally to
those of Switzerland. We shall have to introduce to our readers whole
villages built in the midst of the waters, and a people long completely
forgotten. In many of these stations, none but stone implements have
been found, and on the half-burnt piles on which the huts had been set
up, it is still easy to make out the notches cut with flint hatchets.
We meet with similar pile dwellings, as these structures are called,
in France, Italy, Germany, Ireland, and England, for from the earliest
times man was constantly engaged in sanguinary contests with his
fellowmen, and sought in the midst of the waters a refuge from the
ever present dangers surrounding him.
The discoveries made in Belgium must be ranked amongst the most
important in Europe, and we shall often have occasion to refer to
them. Holland, on the other hand, having much of it been under the sea
for so long, yields nothing to our researches but a few arrow-heads,
hatchets, and knives made of quartz or diorite, and all of them of
the coarsest workmanship.
No less fruitful in results to prehistoric science are the researches
made in the south of Europe. The congress that met at Bologna, in 1871,
showed us that in the Transalpine provinces man was witness of those
physical phenomena which gave to Italy its present configuration;
and the exhibition in connection with the congress enabled us to get
a good idea of the primitive industry which has left relics behind
it in every district of the peninsula.
Some hatchets of a similar type to the most ancient found in France
were dug out of a gravel pit at San Isidro on the borders of the
Mancanares, associated with the bones of a huge elephant that has long
been extinct; and a cave has recently been discovered near Madrid from
which were dug out nearly five hundred skeletons, the greater number
thickly coated with stalagmite. Near the bodies lay several flint
weapons, and some fragments of pottery.[32] Cartailhac tells us of
similar discoveries in various parts of Portugal.[33] The caves of
Santander have yielded worked bones and barbed harpoons; and those
of Castile, various objects resembling those of the Reindeer period
of France. It is, however, an interesting and important fact that
the reindeer never crossed the Pyrenees. Although so far excavations
have been anything but complete, we are already able to assert that
during Palaeolithic times the ancient Iberia was occupied by races
whose industrial development was similar to that of modern Europe.
It will be well to mention also the excavations made on the slopes
of Mount Hymettus, and in the ever-famous plains of Marathon. Finlay
has brought together in Greece a very interesting collection of stone
weapons and implements which he picked up in great numbers at the base
of the Acropolis of Athens. All these discoveries prove the existence
of man at a time about which but yesterday nothing was known, and
to which it is difficult as yet to give a name, this existence being
proved by the most irrefragable of evidence, the work of his own hands.
Although the proofs of there having been a Stone age in Western
Europe are absolutely convincing, it is difficult to feel equally
sure with regard to the portions of the globe where so many districts
are closed to the explorer. Everywhere, however, where excavations
have been made, they have yielded the most remarkable results. M. de
Ujfalvy has brought diorite and serpentine hatchets and wedges from
the south of Siberia, and Count Ouvaroff tells us of a Quaternary
deposit, the only one known at present at Irkutsk, in Eastern Siberia,
containing cut flints. Near Tobolsk, Poliaskoff found some beautifully
worked stones. Other archaeologists tell us of having found, in the
east of the Ural Mountains and on the shores of the Joswa, hammers,
hatchets, pestles, nuclei the shape of polygonal prisms, and round
or long pieces of flint, all pierced with a central hole, which are
supposed to have been spindle whorls. Lastly, Klementz tells us that
the lofty valleys of the Yenesei and its tributaries were inhabited
in the most remote times by races who developed a special civilization.
At the other extremity of the great Asiatic continent, a deposit of
cinders found at the entrance of a cave near the Nahr el Kelb yielded
some flint knives or scrapers, and more recently a prehistoric station
has been made out at Hanoweh, a little village of Lebanon, east of
Tyre. The flints are of primitive shapes, not unlike the most ancient
forms found in France. They were discovered in a mass of DEBRIS of
all kinds, forming a very hard conglomerate. Some teeth, which had
belonged to animals of the bovidae, cervidae, and equidae groups, were
got out with considerable difficulty, but the bones in the conglomerate
were too touch broken up to be identified. Worked flints and arrow-
or spear-heads were also found in considerable quantities in various
parts of the table-land of Sinai, and at the openings of the caves
in which the ancient inhabitants took refuge. It was with stone tools
that these people worked the mines riddling the sides of the mountains,
and it is still easy to make out traces of their operations.
We have already alluded to Japan; for a long time the barbarian
Ainos, the earliest inhabitants of the country, were acquainted with
nothing but stone. Flint arrows were presented to the Emperor Wu-Wang
eleven hundred years before our era; the annals of one of the ancient
dynasties speak of flint weapons, and an encyclopaedia published in
the reign of the Emperor Kang-Hi speaks of rock hatchets, some black
and some green, and all alike dating from the most remote antiquity.
Agates worked by the hand of man are found in great quantities in the
bone beds of the Godavery. Some javelin heads in sandstone, basalt,
and quartz, with scrapers and knives, most of them flat on one side
and rounded on the other, appear to be even more ancient than the
agate implements. Some of the celts resemble those of European type,
others the flint weapons found in Egypt, and the clumsiest forms may
be compared to those still in use amongst the natives of Australia. We
may also mention a somewhat rare type lately discovered in the island
of Melas, which have been characterized as saw-bladed knives. A
letter from Rivett-Carnac announces the discovery of weapons and
stone implements in Banda, a wild mountain district on the northwest
of India. The scrapers, he says, strangely resemble those of the
Esquimaux, and the arrow-heads those of the most ancient inhabitants
of America.[34]
Many megalithic monuments are met with in places widely removed
from each other in the vast Indian Empire. Captain Congreve, after
describing the cairns with their rows of stones ranged in circles, the
kistvaens or dolmens, the huge rocks placed erect as at Stonehenge,
the barrows hollowed out of the cliffs, declares with undisguised
astonishment that there is not a Druidical monument of which he had
not seen the counterpart in the Neilgherry Mountains.[35]
General Faidherbe divides Africa into two distinct regions -- one
north of the Great Desert, where the inhabitants and the fauna and
flora have all alike certain characteristics in common with those
of Europe; and the other south of the Sahara, which was at one
time separated from that in the north by a vast inland sea. In this
southern region we are in Nigritia, or the Africa of the negroes,
where the inhabitants in their physical characteristics and in their
language, the mammals, and the plants, differ altogether from those
of the north. In one point, however, these two regions resemble each
other: in both we recognize a Stone age, which existed in Algeria
and in Egypt, as well as on the banks of the Senegal and at the
Cape of Good Hope. The valley of the Nile from Cairo to Assouan has
yielded a series of objects in flint, porphyry, and hornblendic rock,
retaining traces of human workmanship, and reminding us of similar
implements of European type. These objects,[36] says M. Arcelin,
are always found either beneath modern deposits or at the surface of
the upper plateaux at the highest point to which the river rises;
nothing has, however, been found in the alluvial deposits of the
Nile, in spite of the most persevering search. At the Prehistoric
Congress held at Stockholm, some worked flints were produced that
had been found in the Libyan Desert. This once inhabited district,
now without water or vegetation, can only be reached at the present
day with the greatest difficulty. Is not this yet another proof of the
great changes which have taken place since the advent of man? Lastly,
the Boulak Museum contains a whole series of stone weapons and
implements, showing in their workmanship a progressive development
similar to that we find in Europe. Many archaeologists are of opinion
that the worked flints found in the plains of Lower Egypt date from
Neolithic times. Those alone are Paleolithic which have been found
in a deposit hard enough for the hollowing out of tombs, which are
certainly earlier than the eighteenth dynasty. We must add, however,
that neither with the Palaeolithic nor with the Neolithic relics have
been found any bones of extinct animals. Some savants go yet further:
they think that these worked stones are but chips split off by the
heat of the sun.[37] A phenomenon of this kind is mentioned by Desor
and Escher de la Linth in the Sahara Desert; Fraas quotes a similar
observation made by Livingstone in the heart of Africa, and one by
Wetzstein, who, not far from Damascus; saw hard basalt rocks split
under the influence of the early morning freshness. I have myself
noticed similar phenomena in the Nile valley, but it must be added
that the fragments of rock broken off by the combined influence of
heat and humidity present very notable differences to those worked
by the hand of man, and cannot really be mistaken for them.
In Algeria have been preserved some most interesting relics of
prehistoric times. If I am not mistaken, Worsaae was the first to
note the worked stones in the French possessions in Africa. They have
been picked up in great numbers, especially near the watercourses at
which the ancient inhabitants of the country slaked their thirst,
as do their descendants at the present day. The exploration of the
Sahara daily yields unexpected discoveries; and already fifteen
different stations formerly inhabited by man have been made out. In
those remote days a large river flowed near Wargla, which was then
an important centre, and a number of tools picked up bear witness to
the former presence of an active and industrious population. At one
place the flint implements, arrow-heads, knives, and scrapers are
all of a very primitive type, and were found sorted into piles. This
was evidently a DEPOT, probably forming the reserve stock of the
tribe. Wargla or perhaps Golea at one time appears to have been the
extreme limit of the Stone age in Algeria, but quite recently traces
of primitive man have been discovered amongst the Tuaregs. These
relics are hatchets made of black rock, and arrow-heads not unlike
those which the Arabs attribute to the Djinn; but as we approach the
south we find the flints picked up more clumsily and unskilfully cut
-- a proof that they were the work of a more barbarous people with
less practical skill. It is the megalithic monuments of Algeria,
of which we shall speak more in detail presently, that are the most
worthy of attention. As in India, we meet with them in thousands,
and in certain parts of the continent they extend for considerable
distances. They consist of long, square, circular, or oval enclosures
-- dolmens similar to those of Western Europe, -- and almost always
surrounded by circles of upright stones. The silence of historians
respecting them need not make us doubt their extreme antiquity, for
did it not take a very long time to induce the scientific men of our
day to turn their attention to Algeria at all?
The exploration of Tunisia has enabled us to study the Stone age
in that district, and a few years ago it was announced that nearly
three thousand objects of different types had been found in thirteen
different localities.[38] My son found near Gabes an immense number
of small worked flints not unlike a human nail, the origin and use of
which no one has been able to determine. The association of weapons
and implements roughly finished off, with chips and stones still in
the natural state, bears witness to the existence at one time of
workshops of some importance. The recent discoveries of Collignon
correspond with those in Algeria, and complete our knowledge of the
basin of the Mediterranean.
In the Cave of Hercules, in Morocco, which Pomponius Mela spoke
of as of great antiquity in his day, have been found a great many
worked flints, such as knives and arrow-heads. We shall refer later
to the important monument of Mzora and the menhirs surrounding it,
the builders of which certainly belonged to a race that lived much
nearer our own day than did the inhabitants of the Cave of Hercules.
The south of Africa is not so well known as the north, and the
difficulty of making explorations is a great obstacle to progress. For
some centuries, however, polished stone hatchets from the extreme
south of the continent have been preserved in the museums of Leyden and
Copenhagen, under the name of THUNDERSTONES, or STONES OF GOD. A great
many are found in British South Africa, especially at Graham's Town
and Table Bay.[39] Gooch, after describing the physical configuration
of the Cape, says that stone implements are found in all the terraces
at whatever level of the Quaternary deposits. With these stone objects
were found a good many fragments of coarse hand-made pottery, that
had been merely baked in the sun, and was strengthened with good-sized
pieces of quartz. Similar peculiarities are noticed in ancient European
pottery. We shall have to refer again to these singular analogies,
one of the chief aims of this book being to bring them into notice.
In the torrid regions between the Vaal and the Zambezi rivers,
we find traces of a race of a civilization different from that of
the savages conquered by the English. At Natal the gradual progress
of these unknown people can be traced step by step. To the earliest
period of all belong nothing but roughly hewn flints, and no traces
of pottery have been found; then follow flint arrow-heads of more
distinct form, and here and there fragments of sun-dried pottery. Of
more recent date still are polished stone weapons and more finely
moulded pottery; whilst to the latest date of all belong weapons of
considerable variety of form, better adapted to the needs of man,
and with these weapons were found huge stone mortars which had been
used for crushing grain, and bear witness to the use of vegetable diet.
We also meet with important ruins in the Transvaal. Some walls are
still standing which are thirty feet high and ten thick, forming
imperishable memorials of the past. They are built of huge blocks of
granite piled up without cement. We know nothing of those who erected
them; their name and history are alike effaced from the memory of man,
and we know nothing either of their ancestors or of their descendants.
In the Antipodes certain curious discoveries point to the existence
of man in those remote and mysterious times, to which, for want
of a better, we give in Europe the name of the Age of the Mammoth
and the Reindeer; and everything points to the conclusion that
man appeared in the different divisions of the earth about the same
time. Probably the first appearance of our race in Australia was prior
to the last convulsions of nature which gave to that continent its
present configuration. "Scientific studies," says M. Blanchard,[40]
"lead us to believe that at one period a vast continent rose from the
Pacific Ocean, which continent was broken up, and to a great extent
submerged, in convulsions of nature. New Zealand and the neighboring
islands are relics of this great land."
In the Corrio Mountains in New Zealand, at a height of nearly 4,921
feet above the sea-level, have been found flints shaped by the hand of
man, associated with a number of bones of the Dinornis, the largest
known bird. Other facts bear witness to an extinct civilization,
which we believe to have been extremely ancient, but to which, in the
present state of our knowledge, it is impossible to assign a date. In
the island of Tonga-Taboo, one of the Friendly group, is a remarkable
megalith, the base of which rests on uprights thirty feet high,
and supports a colossal stone bowl which is no less than thirteen
feet in diameter by one in height. In the same island is a trilithon
consisting of a transverse bar resting on two pillars provided with
mortises for its reception. The pillars weigh sixty-five tons, and a
local tradition affirms that the coralline conglomerate out of which
they were hewn was brought from Wallis Island, more than a thousand
miles off. It is difficult to explain[41] how the makers of this
trilithon managed to transport, to work, and to place such masses
in position. In a neighboring island a circle of uplifted stones,
covering an area of several hundred yards, reminds us of the cromlechs
of Brittany. The so-called Burial-Mound of Oberea at Otaheite, if it
really was constructed with stone tools, is yet more curious. Imagine
a pyramid of which the base is a long square, two hundred and sixty
feet long by eighty-seven wide. It is forty-three feet high. The top
is reached by a flight of steps cut in the coralline rock, all these
steps being of the same size and perfectly squared and polished.[42]
FIGURE 4
Stone statues on Easter Island.
On a rock at the entrance to the port of Sydney a kangaroo is
sculptured. In Easter Island (Rapa-Nui) La Perouse discovered a number
of coarsely executed bust statues (Fig. 4). There are altogether
some four hundred of them, forming groups in different parts of the
island. The excavations conducted by Pinart in 1887 have proved these
figures to be sepulchral monuments. He managed to make a considerable
collection of crania and human bones. Round about the crater of the
Rana-Raraku volcano, forty of these figures have been counted, all
of a similar type, all cut in one piece of solid trachyte rock. In
another place are eighty busts with longer noses and thicker lips,
forming a group by themselves. The largest of them is some thirty-nine
feet high. On the sides of the volcano, scattered about amongst
the statues, have been picked up a considerable number of knives,
scrapers, and pointed pieces of obsidian, which were probably tools
thrown away by the sculptors of the figures.
These monuments and sculptures are certainly the work of a race very
different from the present natives, who are altogether incapable of
producing anything of the kind, and who retain absolutely no traditions
respecting their predecessors. This complete oblivion, which may appear
rather strange, is by no means rare amongst savage races, and Sir John
Lubbock cites a great many very curious examples. "Oral traditions,"
says Broca, "are changed and distorted by each succeeding generation;
and are at last effaced to give place to others as transitory,
and thus the most important events are, sooner or later, relegated
to oblivion."[43]
We have dwelt at considerable length in another volume[44] on the
earliest inhabitants of America. Much still remains unknown in spite of
the considerable and important work done of late years. The very name
of the New World seems to be altogether out of place, America being as
old, if not older, than any continent of the Eastern Hemisphere. Lund
has brought forward weighty reasons for his theory that the central
plateau of Brazil was already a country when the rest of the continent
was still submerged or at least repre. sented merely by a few small
islets. This theory, however, even if it could be absolutely proved,
would not help us to fix the date of the earliest presence of man in
America, still less to say by what route he arrived there.
FIGURE 5
Fort Hill, Ohio.
Certain facts, amongst which I would, in the first place, quote the
discoveries of Dr. Abbott in the alluvial deposits of the Delaware
and those recently announced in Nevada,[45] prove the contemporaneity
of men like ourselves with the great edentate and pachydermatous
mammals, which were the most characteristic creatures of the American
fauna. The prehistoric inhabitants of North America were familiar with
the mastodon, those of South America with the glyptodon, the shell of
which on occasion served as a roof to the dwelling of primeval reran,
which dwelling was often but a den hollowed out of the ground. As in
Europe, the early inhabitants of America had to contend with powerful
mammals and fierce carnivora; and in the West as in the East man made
up in intelligence for his lack of brute force, and however formidable
an animal might be, it was condemned to submit to, or disappear
before, its master. In course of time Sedentary replaced Nomad races;
shell heaps, some of marine, some of riverine and lacustrine species,
but all alike mixed with a great variety of rubbish, were gradually
piled up extending for many miles and covering many acres of ground,
bearing witness to the existence of a population already considerable.
FIGURE 6
Group of sepulchral mounds.
In other parts of America prehistoric races have left behind them huge
earthworks, lofty masses which were probably fortifications (Fig. 5),
temples, and sepulchral monuments (Fig. 6). These earthworks extend
throughout North America from the Alleghany Mountains to the Atlantic,
from the great lakes of Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. The name of the
people who erected them is lost, and we must be content with that of
Mound Builders, which commemorate their vast undertakings.
FIGURE 7
Ground plan of a pueblo of the Mac-Elmo Valley.
At a period probably nearer our own, Arizona and New Mexico were
occupied by other maces, who built the so-called PUEBLOS, which were
regular phalansteries, or communal dwellings, each member of the
tribe having to be content with one wretched little cell (Fig. 7). At
some distance from the men of the PUEBLOS lived the Cliff Dwellers,
about whom we know next to nothing; a few stone weapons and countless
fragments of pottery being all they have left behind them. These
men established themselves in situations which are now inaccessible,
hewing out a dwelling in the rocks on the mountains (Figs. 8 and 9)
with wonderful perseverance, and closing up the approaches with
adobes or sun-dried bricks, making incredible efforts to obtain
for their families what must have been at the best but a precarious
shelter.[46] These prehistoric races were succeeded in America by
the Toltecs, Aztecs, Chibcas, and Peruvians, all known in history,
though their origin is as much involved in obscurity as that of their
predecessors. Temples, palaces, and magnificent monuments tell of
the wealth which gold gives, a wealth, alas, which also enervated the
vital forces, so that the Spanish and Portuguese met with but little
serious resistance in their rapid conquests.
FIGURE 8
Cliff-house on the Rio Mancos.
FIGURE 9
House in a rock of the Montezuma Canon.
Such are the facts with which we have to deal. In the following
chapters we shall consider more at length the problems they present,
but already we are led to one important conclusion: in every part of
the globe, in every latitude, in every climate, worked flints, whether
but roughly chipped or elaborately polished, present analogies which
must strike the most superficial observer. "We find them," remarks an
American author, "in the tumuli of Siberia, in the tombs of Egypt,
in the soil of Greece, beneath the rude monuments of Scandinavia;
but whether they come front Europe or Asia, from Africa or America,
they are so much alike in form, in material, and in workmanship,
that they might easily be taken for the work of the same men."
At a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science
in 1871, Sir John Lubbock showed worked flints from Chili and New
Zealand with others found in England, Germany, Spain, Australia, the
Guianas, and on the banks of the Amazon; which one and all belonged
to the same type. More recently the Anthropological Society of Vienna
compared the stone hatchets found near the Canadian lakes and in the
deserts of Uruguay, with others from Catania in Italy, Angermunde in
Brandenburg, and a tomb in Scandinavia, deciding that they were all
exactly alike. Lastly, those who studied at the French Exhibition of
1878 the hatchets, hammers, and scrapers, the bone implements, pottery,
and weapons brought from different places, the inhabitants of which
had no communication with each other, could not fail to notice in
their turn how impossible it was to distinguish between them. "So
evident is this resemblance," says Vogt,[47] "that we may easily
confound together implements brought from such very different sources."
The same observation applies to megalithic monuments. Everywhere
we find these primitive structures assuming similar forms. It is
difficult enough to believe that the wants of man alone, such as
the craving for food, the need of clothing, and the necessity of
defend. ing himself, have led in every case to the same ideas and the
same amount of progress. Even if this be proved by the worked flints,
we cannot accept a similar conclusion with regard to the megalithic
monuments, which imply reflection and a thought of the future far
beyond the material needs of daily life. Is it not more reasonable
to regard a similitude so striking as a proof of the unity of our race?
The human bones discovered are yet more convincing
testimony. Excavations have yielded some which may date from the very
earliest period of the existence of man upon the earth. They have been
found in caves and in the river drift, beneath the mounds of America
and the megalithic monuments of Europe, in the ice-clad districts of
Scandinavia and of Iceland, and in the burning deserts of Africa,
but not one of them owes its existence to men of a type different
from those of historic times or of our own day.[48] MM. Quatrefages
and Hamy in their magnificent work "Crania Ethnica," have been
able to distinguish prehistoric races and indicate the area they
occupied. These races are still represented, and their descendants
of to-day retain the characteristics of their ancestors.
One final conclusion is no less interesting. These absolutely
countless flints, these monuments of imposing size, these stones
of immense weight often brought from afar, these marvellous mounds
and tumuli, bear witness to the presence of a population which was
already considerable at the time of which we are endeavoring to make
out the traces. A long series of centuries must have been needed
for a people to increase to such an extent as to have spread over
entire continents. And time was not wanting. Whatever antiquity may
be attributed to the human race, whatever the initial date to which
its first appearance may be relegated, this antiquity is but slight,
this date is but modern, if we compare it with the truly incalculable
ages of which geology reveals the existence. At every turn we are
arrested by the immensity of time, the immensity of space, and yet
our knowledge is still confined to the mere outer rind of the earth,
and science cannot as yet even guess at the secrets hidden beneath
that rind.
In concluding these introductory remarks, we must add that very
great difficulties await those who devote themselves to prehistoric
studies -- difficulties such as noise but those who have attempted
to conquer them can realize. The rare traces of prehistoric man must
be sought amongst the effects of the cataclysms that have devastated
the earth, and the ruins piled up in the course of ages. We must show
mall wrestling with the ever-recurrent difficulties of his hard life,
and gradually developing in accordance with a law which appears to
be immutable. Such is the aim of this work, and it is with gratitude
that we assert at the beginning that the PIANTA UOMO, the human
plant, as Alfieri calls our race, was endowed by the Creator from
the first with a very vigorous vitality, to enable it to contend with
the dangers besetting its steps in the early days of its existence,
and with a truly marvellous spirit, to be able to make so humble a
beginning the starting-point for a destiny so glorious.