The Prehistoric World or Vanished races Part 5

As already stated, DePerthes made his discoveries public in 1847. Yet they were so opposed to all that had been believed previously, that but few took the pains to investigate for themselves. In 1853, Dr. Rigollot, of Amiens, who had been skeptical as to DePerthes, commenced to look for himself in the gravel beds at St. Acheul, about nine miles below Abbeville. As might be expected, he was soon convinced.

Picture of Paleolithic Flint, England.------

It may be said that the scientific world formally accepted the new theory when such English scientists as Evans, Falconer, Lyell, and Prestwich reported in its favor. Since that time, many discoveries of ancient implements have been made at various places in France and England under circ.u.mstances similar to those in the valley of the Somme.

In England they have been found along almost all the rivers in the southern and south-eastern part. One cla.s.s of discoveries there gives us new ideas as to the extent of time that has pa.s.sed since they were deposited. That is where they occur in gravel beds having no connection with the present system of rivers. In one case the gravel forms a hill fifteen feet high, situated in the midst of a swampy district, surrounded on all sides by low, flat surfaces. Several such instances could be given; but, in all such cases, we can not doubt that, somewhere near, there once rolled the waters of an ancient river, that man once hunted along its banks, and that, owing to some natural cause, the waters forsook their ancient bed--and that since then, in the slow course of ages, the action of running water has removed so much of the surface of the land near there, that we can not guess at its ancient configuration: we only know, from scattered patches of gravel, that we are standing on the banks of an ancient water-course.

One instance, ill.u.s.trative of the great change that has come over the surface features of the country, demanding for their accomplishment a great lapse of time, is furnished by the Isle of Wight. That island is now separated from the mainland by a narrow channel, called the South Hampton Water, or the Solent Sea.

It is now known that this is nothing but an old river channel, in which the sea has usurped the place of the river. The coast is a river embankment, with the usual accompaniments of gravel beds, flint implements, and fresh water sh.e.l.ls. On the sh.o.r.es of the island we find the opposite bank of the old river. A very great change must have taken place in the surface features before the sea could have rolled in and cut off the Isle of Wight from the mainland.

In speaking of the length of time demanded for this change, Dr. Evans says: "Who can fully understand how immeasurably remote was the epoch when what is now that vast bay was high and dry land, and a long range of chalk downs, six hundred feet above the sea, bounded the horizon on the South? And yet that must have been the sight that met the eye of primitive man who frequented the banks of that ancient river, which buried their handiwork in gravels that now cap the cliffs--and of the course of which so strange and indubitable a memorial subsists in what has now become the Solent Sea?"<37>

The ill.u.s.trations scattered through this essay are representations of the stone implements found in the drift of European rivers. During all the long course of time supposed to be covered by the Paleolithic Age, there are but very few evidences of any improvement, as far as we can judge from the implements themselves. This is in itself a melancholy proof of the low condition of man. He had made so little advance in the scale of wisdom, he possessed so little knowledge, he was so much a creature of instinct, that, during the thousands of years demanded for this age, he made no appreciable progress. The advance of the last century was many times greater than that of the entire Paleolithic Age.

A blow struck on one end of a piece of flint will, owing to the peculiar cleavage of flint, split off pieces called flakes. This is the simplest form of implement used by man. It is impossible to say with certainty how they were used; but, from the evidence observed on them, they were probably used as sc.r.a.pers. The men of that day doubtless knew some simple method of preparing clothing from the skins of the animals they had killed, and probably many of these sharp-rimmed flakes were used to a.s.sist in this primitive process of tanning.

Ill.u.s.tration of Flint Flakes.--------

When the piece of flint itself was chipped into form, it was one whose shape would indicate a spear-head or hatchet. We present ill.u.s.trations of each. Forms intermediate between these two are found. Some have such a thick heavy base that it is believed they were used in the hand, and had no handle or haft.

Others, with a cutting edge all round, may have been provided with a handle. M. Mortillet, of France, who has had excellent opportunities of studying this question very thoroughly, thinks that the hatchet was the only type of implement they possessed, and that it was used for every conceivable purpose--but that their weapon was a club, all traces of which have, of course, long since vanished away.<38>

Ill.u.s.trations of Spear Head Type and Hatchet Type.------

These few implements imply that their possessors were savages like the native Australians. In this stage of culture, man lived by hunting, and had not yet learned to till the ground, or to seek the materials out of which his implements were made by mining. Re merely fas.h.i.+oned the stones which happened to be within reach in the shallows of rivers as they were wanted, throwing them away after they had been used. In this manner the large numbers which have been met with in certain spots may be accounted for. Man at this time appears before us as a nomad hunter, poorly equipped for the struggle of life, without knowledge of metals, and ignorant of the art of grinding his stone tools to a sharp edge.<39> Of course we can not hope to learn much of their social condition other than that just set forth.

DePerthes found some flints which show evidence of their human origin, and yet it would be very difficult to say what was their use. He thinks they may have a religious significance, and has set forth a great variety of eloquent surmises respecting them. It only need be said that such theorizing is worse than useless. That while it is very probable these tribes had some system of belief, yet there is no good reason for supposing these flints had any connection with it. It has been supposed, from another series of wrought flints, that the men of this epoch were possessed of some sentiments of art, as pieces have been found thought to represent the forms of animals, men's faces, birds, and fishes; but as very few have been able to detect such resemblances, it is safe to say they do not exist.

As the love of adornment is almost as old as human nature itself, we may not be surprised to find traces of its sway then. Dr. Rigollot found little bunches of sh.e.l.ls with holes through either end. The supposition is that these were used as beads; which is not at all strange, considering how instinctively savage men delight in such ornaments.

These ancient hunters made use of beads partially prepared by nature.

Europe is not the only country where the remains of this savage race are found. They are found in the countries bordering the Mediterranean in Northern Africa, and in Egypt. In this latter country they are doubtless largely buried under the immense deposits of Nile mud; yet in 1878 Professor Haynes discovered in Upper Egypt sc.r.a.pers and hatchets, p.r.o.nounced by archaeologists to be exactly similar to those of the river Somme. We are not informed as to their geological age, but there can be no question that they are much older than any monument of Egyptian civilization hitherto known.<40>

Paleolithic implements have also been found in Palestine and in India.

In the latter country the beds are so situated that they present the same _indicia,_ of age as do those of the Somme Valley. A great portion of the formation has been removed, and deep valleys cut in them by running water.<41> They have also been found in at least one locality in the United States; that is in the glacial gravel of the valley of the Delaware at Trenton, New Jersey. We must not confound these remains with those of the Indian tribes found scattered over a large extent of surface. Those at Trenton also are not only in all respects, except materials, similar to those of the Somme, but are found imbedded in a formation of gravel that was deposited at least as far back as the close of the Glacial Age, thus requiring the pa.s.sage of the same long series of years since they were used, as do the implements of European rivers.<42> We must also bear in mind that no country has been so carefully explored for these implements as has Europe, and that the very country, Asia, where, for many reasons, we might hope to find not only unequivocal proofs of man's presence but from our discoveries be able to clear up many dark points, as to the race, origin, and fate of these primitive tribes, is yet almost a sealed book.

But the scattered discoveries we have instanced show us that the people whose implements have been described in this chapter were very widely dispersed over the earth, and everything indicates that they were far removed from us in time. The similarity in type of implements shows that, wherever found, they were the same people, in the same low savage state of culture--"Alike in the somber forests of oak and pine in Great Britain, and when surrounded by the luxuriant vegetation of the Indian jungle."<43>

We have yet two important points to consider. The first is, what race of men were these river tribes? and second, when did they arrive in Europe?

Did they precede the glacial cold? did they make their appearance during a warm interglacial period? or was it not until the final retreat of the glaciers that they first wandered into Europe? These questions are far from settled; yet they have been the object of a great amount of painstaking research.

To determine the first point, it is necessary that anatomists have skeletons of the men of this age, to make a careful study of them. But for a great many reasons, portions of the human skeleton are very rarely found in such circ.u.mstances that we are sure they date back to the Paleolithic Age, and especially is this true of the men of the River Drift. In a few instances fragmentary portions have been found.

M. Quatref.a.ges, of France, who is certainly a very high authority on these points, thinks that the hunter tribes of the River Drift belonged to the Canstadt race--"so named from the village of Canstadt, in Germany, near which a fossil skull was discovered in 1700, and which appears to be closely allied to the Neanderthal skull, discovered near Dusseldorf in 1857, and about which so much has been written."<44> Quatref.a.ges supposes that this type of man is still to be found in certain Australian tribes. These are not mere guesses, but are conclusions drawn from careful study by eminent European scholars.<45>

It is well known that a competent naturalist needs but a single fossil bone to describe the animal itself, and tell us its habits. So also anthropologists need but fragments of the human skeleton, especially of the skull, to describe characteristics of the race to which the individual belonged.

Ill.u.s.tration of Neanderthal Man.-----------

This cut, though an ideal restoration, is a restoration made in accordance with the results of careful study of fragmentary skulls found in various localities in Europe. The head and the face present a savage aspect; the body harmonized with the head; the height was not more than five feet and a half; yet the bones are very thick in proportion to their length, and were evidently supplied with a powerful set of muscles, since the little protuberances and depressions where the muscles are attached are remarkably well developed.<46> Huxley and Quatref.a.ges have both pointed out that representatives of this race are to be found among some Australian tribes. "Among the races of this great island there is one, distributed particularly in the province of Victoria, in the neighborhood of Port Western, which reproduces in a remarkable manner, the characters of the Canstadt race."<47> Not the least interesting result of this discovery is the similarity of weapons and implements. "With Mr. Lartet, we see in the obsidian lances of New Caledonia the flint heads of the lower alluvium of the Somme. The hatchet of certain Australians reminds us, as it did Sir Charles Lyell, of the Abbeville hatchet."<48>

Yet some hesitate about accepting these interesting inferences, thinking that the portions of the human skeleton thus far recovered, which are beyond a doubt referable to this period, are too fragmentary to base such important conclusions upon. This is the view of Boyd Dawkins, who thinks "we can not refer them to any branch of the human race now alive."<49> "We are without a clew," continues he, "to the ethnology of the River Drift man, who most probably is as completely extinct as the woolly rhinoceros or the cave bear."<50> Future discoveries will probably settle this point.

It is yet a much disputed point to what particular portion of the Glacial Age we can trace the appearance of man. We can profitably note the tendency of scientific thought in this direction. But a short time has elapsed since a few scholars here and there began to urge an antiquity for man extending back beyond the commonly accepted period of six thousand years. Though it is now well known and admitted that there are no good grounds for this estimate, yet such was its hold, such its sway over scientific as well as popular thought, that an appeal to this chronology was deemed sufficient answer to the discoveries of DePerthes, Schmerling, and others. It was but yesterday that this popular belief was overthrown and due weight given the discoveries of careful explorers in many branches, and the antiquity of man referred, on indisputable grounds, to a point of time at least as far back as the close of the preceding geological age.<51>

It seems as if here a halt had been called, and all possible objections are urged against a further extension of time. It is, of course, well to be careful in this matter, and to accept only such results as inevitably follow from well authenticated discoveries. But it also seems to us there is no longer any doubt that man dates back to the beginning of that long extended time we have named the Glacial Age.<52>

In the first place, we must recall the animals that suddenly made their appearance in Europe at the beginning of this age. Though there were a number of species, since become extinct, the majority of animal forms were those still living.<53>

These are the animals with which man has always been a.s.sociated. There is therefore no longer any reason to suppose the evolution of animal life had not reached that stage where man was to appear. We need only recall how strongly this point was urged in reference to the preceding geological epoch, to see its important bearings here. Mr. Boyd Dawkins has shown that the great majority of animals which invaded Europe at the commencement of this age, can be traced to Northern and Central Asia, whence, owing to climatic changes, they migrated into Europe.<54>

Inasmuch as man seems to have been intimately a.s.sociated with these animals, it seems to us very likely that he came with them from their home in Asia. We think the tendency of modern discoveries is to establish the fact that man arrived in Europe along with the great invasion of species now living.<55>

Turning now to the authorities, we find this to be the accepted theory of many of those competent to form an opinion.

In England Mr. Geikie has strongly urged the theory that the Glacial Age includes not only periods of great cold, but also epochs of exceptional mildness; and he strongly argues that all the evidence of the River Drift tribes can be referred to these warm interglacial epochs; in other words, that they were living in Europe during the Glacial Age.<56>

In answer to this it has been stated that the relics of River Drift tribes in Southern England overlie bowlder clay, and must therefore be later in origin than the Glacial Age.<57>

But, Mr. Geikie and others have shown that the ice of the last great cold did not overflow Southern England,<58> so that this evidence, rightly read, was really an argument in favor of their interglacial age.<59> The committee appointed by the British a.s.sociation to explore the Victoria Cave, near Settle, urge this point very strongly in their final report of 1878.<60> To this report Mr. Dawkins, a member of the committee, records his dissent, but in his last great work he freely admits that man was living in England during the Glacial Age, if he did not, in fact, precede it.<61>

Mr. Skertchley, of the British coast survey, in 1879,<62> announced the discovery in East Anglia of Paleolithic, implements underlying the bowlder clay of that section. Mr. Geikie justly regards this as a most important discovery.<63>

Finally Mr. Dawkins, in his address as President of the Anthropological section of the British a.s.sociation, in 1882, goes over the entire ground. After alluding to the discovery of paleolithic implements in Egypt, India, and America, he continues: "The ident.i.ty of implements of the River Drift hunter proves that he was in the same rude state of civilization, if it can be called civilization, in the Old and the New World, when the hand of the geological clock struck the same hour. It is not a little strange that this mode of life should have been the same in the forests of the North, and south of the Mediterranean, in Palestine, in the tropical forests of India, and on the western sh.o.r.es of the Atlantic." This, however, is not taken as proving the ident.i.ty of race, but as proving that in this morning-time of man's existence he had nowhere advanced beyond a low state of savagism. Mr. Dawkins then continues: "It must be inferred from his wide-spread range that he must have inhabited the earth for a long time, and that his dispersal took place before the Glacial epoch in Europe and America. I therefore feel inclined to view the River Drift hunter as having invaded Europe in preglacial times, along with other living species which then appeared."

He also points out that the evidence is that he lived in Europe during all the changes of that prolonged period known as the Glacial Age.<64>

Sir John Lubbock also records his a.s.sent to these views. He says on this point: "It is, I think, more than probable that the advent of the Glacial Period found man already in possession of Europe."<65>

In our own country Prof. Powell says: "It is now an established fact that man was widely scattered over the earth at least as early as the beginning of the Quaternary period, and perhaps in Pliocene times."<66>

This completes our investigation of the men of the River Drift. We see how, by researches of careful scholars, our knowledge of the past has been enlarged. Though there are many points which are as yet hidden in darkness, we are enabled to form quite a clear mental picture of this early race. Out of the darkness which still enshrouds the continent of Asia we see these bands of savages wandering forth; some to Europe, Africa, and the west; others to America and the east.

This was at a time when slowly falling temperature but dimly prophesied a reign of arctic cold, still far in the future. This race does not seem to have had much capacity for advancement, since ages came and went leaving him in the same low state. During the climax of glacial cold he doubtless sought the southern coasts of Europe along with the temperate species of animals. But whenever the climatic conditions were such that these animals could find subsistence as far north as England he accompanied them there, and so his remains are found constantly a.s.sociated with theirs throughout Europe. Though doubtless very low in the scale, and at the very foot of the ladder of human progress, we are acquainted with no facts connecting them with the higher orders of animals. If such exists, we must search for them further back in geological time. The men of the River Drift were distinctively human beings, and as such possessed those qualities which, developing throughout the countless ages that have elapsed, have advanced man to his present high position.

REFERENCES

(1) This chapter was submitted to Prof. G. F. Wright, of Oberlin, for criticism.

(2) Lyell's "Antiquity of Man;" Geikie's "Prehistoric Europe,"

p. 332.

(3) It is, however, applicable to only a portion of the Quaternary, or Post-tertiary period. (Wright.) (4) Chapter II.

(5) Geikie's "Prehistoric Europe," p. 339.

(6) Dawkins's "Cave Hunting," p. 365.

(7) Dawkins's "Early Man in Britain," p. 112.

(8) Geikie's "Prehistoric Europe," p. 337.

(9) The majority of the Pliocene animals disappeared from Europe at the close of the period in question. This includes such animals as the mastodon, hipparion, and many kinds of deer (Geikie's "Prehistoric Europe," p. 334). The following animals survived into the Glacial Age, and some even into Inter-glacial periods: African hippopotamus (still living), saber-toothed lion, bear of Auvergne, big-nosed rhinoceros, Etruskan rhinoceros, Sedgwick's deer, deer of Polignac, Southern elephant. ("Prehistoric Europe," p. 95.) (10) The northern animals include the following: Alpine hare, musk-sheep, glutton, reindeer, arctic fox, lemming, tailless hare, marmot, spermophile, ibex, snowy vole, chamois. (Geikie's "Prehistoric Europe," p. 32.) (11) Geikie's "Prehistoric Europe," p. 28.