The Meeting-Place of Geology and History Part 3

It is further significant that there is evidence to show that the larger and stronger race was that which prevailed in Europe at the time of its greatest elevation above the sea and greatest horizontal extent, and when its fauna included many large quadrupeds now extinct. This race of giants was thus in the possession of a greater continental area than that now existing, and had to contend with gigantic brute rivals for the possession of the world. It is also not improbable that this early race became extinct in Europe in consequence of the physical changes which occurred in connection with the subsidence that reduced the land to its present limits, and that the feebler race which succeeded came in as the appropriate accompaniment of a diminished land-surface and a less genial climate in the early historic period. The older races are those usually cla.s.sed as palaeolithic, and are supposed to antedate the period of polished stone; but this may, to some extent, be a prejudice of collectors, who have arrived at a foregone conclusion as to distinctions of this kind. Judging from the great cranial capacity of the older race and the small number of their skeletons found, it might be fair to suppose that they represent rude outlying tribes belonging to nations which elsewhere had attained to greater population and culture.

Lastly, all of these old European races were Turanian, Mongolian, or American in their head-forms and features, as well as in their habits, implements, and arts. In other words, their nearest affinities were with races of men which in the modern world are the oldest and most widely distributed.

The reader, reflecting on what he has learned from history, may be disposed here to ask, Must we suppose Adam to have been one of these Turanian men, like the 'Old Man of Cro-magnon'? In answer, I would say that there is no good reason to regard the first man as having resembled a Greek Apollo or an Adonis. He was probably of sterner and more muscular mould. But he was probably more akin to the more delicate and refined race represented by the solitary skull of Truchere, while the gigantic palaeocosmic men of the European caves are more likely to have been representatives of that terrible and powerful race who filled the antediluvian world with violence, and who reappear in postdiluvian times as the Anakim and traditional giants, who const.i.tute a feature in the early history of so many countries. Perhaps nothing is more curious in the revelations as to the most ancient cave men than that they confirm the old belief that there were 'giants in those days.' At the same time we must bear in mind that the more diminutive race which survived must have existed previously in some part of the world, and must have furnished the survivors of the succeeding subsidence (see ill.u.s.tration on p. 82).

And now let us pause for a moment to picture these so-called palaeolithic men. What could the 'Old Man of Cro-magnon' have told us, had we been able to sit by his hearth and listen understandingly to his speech?--which, if we may judge from the form of his palate-bones, must have resembled more that of the Americans or Mongolians than of any modern European people. He had, no doubt, travelled far, for to his stalwart limbs a long journey through forests and over plains and mountains would be a mere pastime. He may have bestridden the wild horse, which seems to have abounded at the time in France, and he may have launched his canoe on the waters of the Atlantic. His experience and memory might extend back a century or more, and his traditional lore might go back to the times of the first mother of our race. Did he live in that wide post-pliocene continent which extended westward through Ireland? Did he know and had he visited the more cultured nations that lived in the great plains of the Mediterranean Valley, or on that nameless river which flowed through the land now covered by the German Ocean? Had he visited or seen from afar the great island Atlantis, whose inhabitants could almost see in the sunset sky the islands of the blest?

Could he have told us of the huge animals of the antediluvian world, and of the feats of the men of renown who contended with these animal giants? We can but conjecture all this. But, mute though they may be as to the details of their lives, the man of Cro-magnon and his contemporaries are eloquent of one great truth, in which they coincide with the Americans and with the primitive men of all the early ages.

They tell us that primitive man had the same high cerebral organisation which he possesses now, and, we may infer, the same high intellectual and moral nature, fitting him for communion with G.o.d and heads.h.i.+p over the lower world. They indicate also, like the mound-builders, who preceded the North American Indian, that man's earlier state was the best--that he had been a high and n.o.ble creature before he became a savage. It is not conceivable that their high development of brain and mind could have spontaneously engrafted itself on a mere brutal and savage life. These gifts must be remnants of a n.o.ble organisation degraded by moral evil. They thus justify the tradition of a Golden and Edenic Age, and mutely protest against the philosophy of progressive development as applied to man, while they bear witness to the similarity in all important characters of the oldest prehistoric men with that variety of our species which is at the present day at once the most widely extended and the most primitive in its manners and usages.[19]

[19] Perhaps no feature of this early human age is more remarkable than its artistic productions. Recent testimony, more especially that of the very careful explorers of the deposits at Spy, in Belgium, seems to show existence of the potter's art, though this until lately was denied.

These people ornamented their clothing with pearly and coloured sh.e.l.ls, and made beautiful necklaces. We have already noticed that found in the cave of Goyet. At Sordes, in the Pyrenees, in a very old interment of this period, there was a necklace of forty-three teeth of the cave lion and cave bear, carved with figures of animals (see p. 71). The handle of a piercer, represented on p. 59, is a marvel of skilful adaptation of an animal form to produce a handle fitted to be firmly and conveniently grasped by the human hand. The figure of the mammoth on p. 68 shows how a few bold lines may produce a vigorous and truthful sketch; and mult.i.tudes of such carvings and drawings have been found in France as well as in Germany and Belgium. Even the chipping of flint is an art requiring much skill to produce the fine knives, spears, &c., so commonly found, and there is evidence that these were fitted into strong and probably artistic handles. All this and much more testifies to the fact that our palaeocosmic men were no mean artists as well as artificers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OUTLINE OF MAMMOTH, CARVED ON A PLATE OF IVORY, FROM THE CAVE OF LA MADELEINE]

CHAPTER V

SUBDIVISIONS AND CONDITIONS OF THE PALANTHROPIC AGE

While all geologists and archaeologists are agreed in the existence of the men contemporary with the mammoth and reindeer in Europe, and in the fact of two or even three races of men having existed in that period, various opinions are entertained as to the succession of events and the chronological cla.s.sification of the remains. Mortillet, whose arrangement has been usually adopted in France, recognises a period of chipped stone or palaeolithic period, corresponding to the palanthropic age, and a period of polished stone, corresponding to the neanthropic age. Within the former he believes that it is possible to separate different ages,[20] from the character of the implements and other remains. The first two are characterised by the presence of two elephants, the mammoth and another species (_E. antiquus_), the next two by the mammoth a.s.sociated with the cave bear and reindeer, the last by the nearly entire predominance of the reindeer. Dupont is content in Belgium to recognise a mammoth age and a reindeer age, but the latter perhaps includes some deposits which are properly neanthropic.

[20] Respectively the Achulienne, Ch.e.l.lienne, Mousterienne, Soloutrienne, and Magdalenienne.

Carthaillac places the whole palanthropic age as quaternary, properly so-called, which he separates from the tertiary on the one hand and the modern on the other, and divides his quaternary into two stages, the first characterised by _E. antiquus_ and Mortillet's Ch.e.l.lean men, the second by the mammoth and reindeer--the earlier of these two periods being warm and moist, the latter cold and dry. The table appended to this chapter is modified from those of Carthaillac. Dawkins, while admitting a similar twofold division, calls the earlier men those of the river gravels, the latter those of the caves.

This twofold division of the palanthropic age requires some consideration. In the first place, there is reason to believe that the Canstadt race locally preceded that of Cro-magnon. I say locally, for no one supposes that they are distinct species, and as varietal forms they may have originated from a common intermediate ancestor, or the humbler race may be the earlier, and the higher race an improvement on it, or the lower race may have been a degraded type of the higher. Probably also there was a third, the Truchere race, and the Cro-magnon race may have been a half-breed or metis progeny.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TOOTH OF CAVE BEAR, WITH ENGRAVING OF A SEAL, FROM A COLLAR FOUND AT SORDES, PYRENEES (after Carthaillac)]

Again, there was an undoubted change of fauna within the palanthropic age, and this dependent on or accompanied by a change of climate. The earlier elephant of the period (_E. antiquus_) and its companion animals are believed to have been suited to a warm climate, and to have entered Europe from the south-*east. With, or immediately after, them came man, and this conclusion harmonises with human physiology, for we know that man must have originated in a warm climate, and must in the first place have been a feeder on fruits and grains or other nutritious vegetable products. In this early stage he would be nearly dest.i.tute of implements and weapons. But in the succeeding cold period, one tribe after another might be obliged to resort to hunting habits, to the use of fire and of clothing, and of natural and artificial shelter. Hence the peculiarities of the cave men, who, while they advanced in art, may have also advanced in ferocity and warlike habits, under the pressure of necessity and compet.i.tion. Hence also their a.s.sociation more and more closely with such animals as the reindeer, the hairy mammoth, and the woolly rhinoceros, while the previous species had migrated to the south or perished. Thus it would appear that the men of the mammoth age may not be really the most primitive men, but a derivative from them under pressure of a severe climate. This possibility may be summed up as follows. If the early part of the post-glacial or palanthropic era was characterised by a milder climate than its later period, this may have had much to do with the change in implements and weapons. The earliest men probably subsisted merely on natural fruits and other vegetable productions. To secure these in a mild climate they would require no implements, except perhaps to dig for roots or to crack nuts. If they migrated into a colder climate, or if the climate became more severe, they might be obliged to become hunters and fishermen, and would invent new implements and weapons, not because they had advanced in civilisation, but, as Lamech has it in Genesis, 'because of the ground which the Lord had cursed,' and which would no longer yield food to them. At the same time they might contend with one another for the most sheltered and productive stations, and so war might further stimulate that very questionable advance in civilisation which consists in the improvement of weapons of destruction. We have much to learn as to these matters; but we must, if we have any regard to physiology and to natural probability, start from the idea that the most primitive men were frugivorous and fitted for a mild climate. In this case we should expect that these earliest men would leave behind them scarcely any weapons or implements except of the simplest kind, and that their apparent progress in the arts of war and the chase might in reality be evidence, up to a certain point at least, of increasing barbarism.

Primitive as well as modern men present in these respects strange paradoxes.

We have to inquire in the sequel as to the cause of the final disappearance of the palaeocosmic men, and as to the question whether history is cognisant of any such human period as that which has occupied us in this chapter, or whether, as has sometimes been a.s.sumed, it is altogether prehistoric.

On the subject of the correlation of the French and Belgian discoveries as to primitive man, a most interesting and important communication was made by Dupont to the Geological Society of Belgium in 1892.[21] The veteran explorer of the Belgian caves addresses himself in this paper to a careful comparison of the geological relations, animal remains and human relics in these caves, and in the gravels and 'quaternary' clays a.s.sociated with them. He arrives at the conclusion, which I had already stated,[22] that these deposits are contemporaneous and show similar stages, but that the mammoth age properly so-called, in which the primitive people fed on the mammoth and its companion the woolly rhinoceros, extended to a later date in Belgium than in France, so that the mammoth age of Dupont and the reindeer age of the French archaeologists overlap one another. He notes in connection with this that there is evidence of the continued existence of the mammoth in the so-called reindeer age of France, in the discovery in caves of that period of plates of ivory with the portrait of the mammoth engraved on them. It would therefore appear either that the mammoth earlier became extinct or rare in France, perhaps on account of climatal changes, or perhaps because of destruction by man, or that the habits of the French populations changed in such a way as to cause them to confine themselves to smaller game. In either case, we now find that the whole palanthropic age is one period. On the other hand, Dupont agrees with Mortillet that there is a hiatus, physical, palaeontological and anthropological, between the so-called palaeolithic and neolithic periods, that is, between the palanthropic and neanthropic ages.

[21] _Bulletin de la Societe Belge de Geologie_, janvier 1893. This paper should be studied by all interested in the subject.

[22] _Fossil Men._

Dupont holds that the plain-dwellers (_Pedionomytes_, as he calls them) were the earliest known men, corresponding to the oldest gravel remains of Dawkins and Prestwich, and points out that their implements are in size and form, though not in material and finish, allied to those of the polished stone age, which might thus be regarded as an improved continuation or revival of this first period. This might be read to mean, as above maintained, that the earliest men were peaceful and perhaps in part agricultural, that they were succeeded by lawless, powerful, artistic and savage peoples, and when the latter were swept away that a remnant of the primitive stock repossessed the land. If this proves to be the net result, it will correspond exactly with our old historical beliefs.

I was struck in reading this paper with a remark of Dupont on the unprogressive character of the men of the mammoth age, who seem to have made so little advance in the arts of life during the period of their occupation of Europe. Perhaps he makes too great an estimate of the length of their residence, or does not sufficiently consider how long men about their stage of civilisation have remained at the same point in the historic period. Nor does he consider the possibility of the cave men belonging to ruder tribes of a race which may have inhabited better if more perishable residences elsewhere. In any case, all experience shows that to such a people any great advance in the arts could come only by missionary influence from abroad, or by the appearance of some great inventive genius among themselves; and no good fortune of this kind seems to have happened to the Canstadt or Cro-magnon men, or if it did, they rejected their opportunity, as so many others have since done.

Still, perhaps, we need not pity them too much. They lived in a young and fresh condition of the earth, enjoyed a vigorous health, and were gifted with rare strength and energy. They were bountifully provided for by nature as to food and clothing, were in slavery to no man, lived in families bound together by ties of affection, and were free to migrate over vast territories according to the exigencies of the seasons. They had some taste in dress and ornaments, and no doubt enjoyed their clever carvings on bone and ivory as much as any modern lovers of art their most finished treasures. A Cro-magnon 'brave,' tall, muscular and graceful in movement, clad in well-dressed skins, ornamented with polished sh.e.l.ls and ivory pendants, with a pearly sh.e.l.l helmet, probably decked with feathers, and armed with his flint-headed lance and skull-cracker of reindeer antler handsomely carved, must have been a somewhat n.o.ble savage, and he must have rejoiced in the chase of the mammoth, the rhinoceros, the bison, and the wild horse and reindeer, and in launching his curiously-constructed harpoons against the salmon and other larger fish that haunted the rivers.

Nor was he dest.i.tute of higher hopes. He laid his dead reverently in the bosom of mother earth, with such things as had been pleasant or useful in life, and his rudimentary bible, or 'book of the dead,' must have at least included the idea--'This corruptible shall put on incorruption, this mortal immortality.' That is the meaning of such funeral gifts in every part of the world, and has always been so, as far as we can learn.

But the belief in immortality implies also a belief in a G.o.d or G.o.ds.

For if there is a spiritual world for the dead, there must be a Power to care for them there. Whether these beliefs were originally implanted in him when G.o.d breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, or were taught to him by special revelation, we do not know, but they were there as a foundation on which he could, with the aid of his sense of right and wrong, build a happy and harmless life. That he did not always do so we have some sad evidence, to be gathered even from his bones; and the testimony of tradition is that his great sin was that of inhuman violence, and it was for this that he was swept away by the Flood, and replaced by men of more peaceful mould, whom but for that catastrophe he would soon have annihilated.

Carthaillac[23] devotes a chapter to the mortuary customs of the men of the quaternary (palanthropic) age. He shows that the statement sometimes made that these men did not care for the dead is entirely incorrect, though he believes that we know comparatively little of their burials, owing to the circ.u.mstance that only those in caverns were likely to be preserved or discovered. The discoveries at Spy, in Belgium, show that even the Canstadt race, the lowest in development, and probably in art, interred the bodies of their dead, while a large number of interments of the Cro-magnon race are known. He calls attention to the fact that in all of these the body lies on its side. The hands are brought up to the head or neck, and the knees are bent, sometimes slightly, sometimes very strongly, so as to give the body a crouching posture (p. 79). The idea seems to have been to place the body in the att.i.tude of sleep or of rest. The deceased was arrayed in the garments and ornaments worn during life, and not infrequently a quant.i.ty of red oxide of iron was buried with, or has been scattered over, the body. Flint knives and lances seem often to have been placed with the dead. It is needless to say that all this recalls the burial customs of many rude tribes of men up to modern times.

[23] _Homme Prehistorique._

There is some reason to believe that occasionally, at least, the flesh has been partially removed from the bones before interment. This reminds us of the custom of some American tribes, who were in the habit of disinterring the dead after a temporary burial, carefully cleaning the bones, and then placing them wrapped in skins in their tribal ossuaries.

It would seem, however, that the primitive men when they removed the flesh did so in a recent state. Perhaps this practice was resorted to only when the body had to be kept for some time, or carried some distance for interment. If the body was disembowelled and the remaining flesh and ligaments dried, it would be reduced very nearly to the condition of the imperfect mummies of the Guanches of the Canaries and of the Peruvians. Thus we may suppose that we have here a rudimentary condition of the art of the embalmer.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SKELETON OF LAUGERIE Ba.s.sE, DORDOGNE, SHOWING THE POSITION OF THE PERFORATED Sh.e.l.lS ON THE LIMBS AND FOREHEAD (after Carthaillac)]

Some questions still remain as to the races of men actually known to us in the palanthropic age. It has already been explained that in the earliest part of this period, that characterised by the presence of the _Elephas antiquus_ in Europe, there are evidences of the existence of man, and this in a more genial climate than that prevailing later. Of these men we have no certain osseous remains. Should these be found, we may antic.i.p.ate that their characters would be peculiar, and would indicate a frugivorous rather than a carnivorous mode of life, and less of rude power than that evidenced by the Canstadt and Cro-magnon races.

Of the latter, though both are of the same faunal period, and therefore geologically contemporaneous, the former, the lower of the two in point of physical development, is apparently in Western Europe the older, and represents the earlier part of the mammoth age, when the climate had become cooler and _Elephas primigenius_ had succeeded to _E. antiquus_.

The Cro-magnon race, beginning in this period, goes on to the close of the mammoth age, which, as already stated, coincides with the reindeer age of the French archaeologists. This Cro-magnon race I am disposed to regard as a mixed or half breed tribe, produced by the union of the Canstadt peoples with the higher race already hinted at. This last may possibly be represented by a few skulls more resembling those of the men of the neanthropic age, which are occasionally found in the burials of the Cro-magnon people, and of which that found at Truchere has been already referred to.

We have thus traces of two primitive or antediluvian races, one probably mild and subsisting on vegetable food, and another fierce, rude and carnivorous, perhaps a product of degeneracy of the former; and a third, or mixed race, of greater physical power and energy than either of the others. This is of course merely a hypothetical reading of the facts, but it is by no means improbable, and would, as we shall see, bring them into close relation with the teachings of history and tradition as to the antediluvian age.

The most careful and elaborate studies of these several types have been made by MM. Quatref.a.ges and Hamy. The former sums up the races of fossil or 'quaternary' men as six in number, viz.: (1) The Canstadt; (2) the Cro-magnon; (3) the mesitocephalic race of Furfooz; (4) the sub-brachycephalic race of Furfooz; (5) the race of Grenelle; (6) the race of Truchere. Of these only three (namely, Nos. 1, 2, and 6) properly belong to the palanthropic age. The races of Furfooz[24] and of the upper beds of Grenelle are neanthropic, because they are found with the animal remains of that age, and they resemble in cranial characters the neanthropic peoples.

[24] Noticed later, in Chapter VII.

The Canstadt and Cro-magnon races resemble each other in being long-headed or dolichocephalic, and in having strong and coa.r.s.ely-made facial bones, but the Canstadt race has a comparatively low fore-*head with strong superciliary arches, and round eye-sockets. The Cro-magnon race has a brain-case of more than ordinary capacity, a more elevated fore-*head, and eye-sockets singularly elongated horizontally. Broca has measured the cubic contents of the Cro-magnon skull, and gives as the result 1,590 cubic centimetres, or 119 centimetres more than the average of 125 modern Parisian skulls. The Canstadt men were of moderate stature, but strongly built and muscular. The Cro-magnon race was of great stature, some skeletons approaching to seven feet in height, and affording evidence of immense muscular development.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SKULL FROM TRUCHeRE, SHOWING A PECULIAR PALANTHROPIC TYPE ALLIED TO NEANTHROPIC RACES (after Quatref.a.ges)]

The race of Truchere is represented by only a single skull; but Quatref.a.ges vouches for it as belonging to the age of the mammoth. It is a well-formed brachycephalic cranium of unusually great internal capacity, and would be regarded anywhere as indicating a race of high and refined cerebral endowment. If really of the mammoth age, it may have belonged to a straggler or captive from a higher and more cultured tribe, introduced accidentally into a sepulchre of the Cro-magnon period. It connects itself with the speculation in the preceding pages as to the existence of such a race. This skull resembles, as we should expect, the type of the neanthropic men who spread over the earth at the beginning of that later age.

Table Showing Relations of Later Cenozoic Ages in Europe

Later cenozoic

______________________________________________________________ | | | | | Geological | Geography and Climate | Fauna | | Periods | | | |_________________|_______________________|____________________| | | | | | Modern or | The actual climate | Modern quadrupeds, | | neanthropic | and geographical | including | | | arrangements | domestic animals | |_________________|_______________________|____________________| | | | | | | Cold and dry, with | Reindeer, | L C | | widely extended | mammoth (Elephas | a e | | continents. Extension | primigenius), | t n | Post-glacial or | of glaciers &c. | hairy rhinoceros | e o | palanthropic | | (R. tichorhinus) | r z | | | | o | | Warm and moist, | | i | | extended continents | Elephas antiquus | c | | | and R. Merkii | |_________________|_______________________|____________________| | | | | | Pleistocene or | Glacial period. | Arctic animals | | glacial | Submergence and | and plants | | | diminished continents | | |_________________|_______________________|____________________| | | | | | | | Elephas | | Pliocene | First continental | meridionalis, | | | period. | Rhinoceros | | | Mild climate | leptorhinus, and | | | | other extinct | |_________________|_______________________|____________________| ______________________________________________________________ | | | | | Geological | Geography and Climate | Fauna | | Periods | | | |_________________|_______________________|____________________| | | | | | Modern or | So-called of Iron, | Recent | | neanthropic | Bronze, and Polished | Roman | | | Stone | Gaulish | | | | Iberian | |_________________|_______________________|____________________| | | | | | | | Magdalenian | L C | Post-glacial or | So-called palaeolithic | Soloutrian | a e | palanthropic | or Age of | Mousterian | t n | | Chipped Stone | Ch.e.l.lean | e o | | | | r z | | | | o | | | | i | | | | c | | | | |_________________|_______________________|____________________| | | | | Pleistocene or | | | glacial | | |_________________| No certain trace of Man | | | | | Pliocene | | |_________________|____________________________________________|

CHAPTER VI

END OF THE PALANTHROPIC AGE

The palanthropic age came to a tragic end, and is somewhat definitely separated from that which succeeded it. This appears from several considerations which are too often overlooked by writers who have a prejudice in favour of everything pa.s.sing imperceptibly and by slow degrees into that by which it is followed--an exaggerated uniformitarianism beyond that of Lyell, but in harmony with the hypothesis of Darwin, to which many anthropologists appear to tie themselves hopelessly.

Three facts are here specially important. The Canstadt and Cro-magnon races are physically different from any modern races, and give place at the close of this age to peoples as distinct from them as any now existing, and who, on the other hand, while separated from the palaeocosmic men preceding them, are linked with the races of modern times. It is no doubt true that occasional and abnormal human skulls may to this day be seen on living men which are more or less of the Canstadt or Cro-magnon type. These are good evidences of the unity of man through all the ages, but no race exists having all the peculiarities of these ancient peoples, which thus belong not to a distinct species but to a distinct racial variety of man.

Secondly, at the close of the palanthropic age we find a great change in land animals--a number of important species hunted by early man having disappeared, and the more meagre modern fauna having come in at once.