Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples Part 12

We may add that the distances between what we may call megalithic zones is considerable. We meet, for instance, with dolmens in Circa.s.sia and in the Crimea, but there are no others nearer than the Baltic. There are none in the districts peopled by the Belgae, from the Drenthe to the borders of Normandy, nor are there any in the valleys of the Rhine or of the Scheldt. There are but a few in Italy or in Greece, where Pelasgic buildings were early erected, and bore witness to a more advanced civilization. We meet with them again, however, in Palestine, but we must traverse many miles before we find other examples at Peshawur and in the valley of Cabul. It is difficult to overrate the importance of these facts, or to explain these gaps. Are they, however, so complete as has been supposed? The few travellers who have crossed Afghanistan and Daghestan have seen tumuli which may have served as points of union between the monuments of India and those of the Caucasus. The megalithic monuments of Palestine and of Arabia may yet be found to be linked with those of Algeria, by examples in the little known regions between the Nile and the Regency of Tripoli. If our ignorance forbids us to a.s.sert anything on this point, it equally forbids our denying anything with any confidence. We may also add one general remark: the countries where megalithic monuments are found, abound in granite, in sandstone, and in flint, whilst other districts have only very friable limestones; and, their monuments, if they were ever erected, would have been more easily destroyed, the very ruins disappearing and leaving no trace.

It has been said, moreover, that the mode of construction of the dolmens, and we hate ourselves made the same remark, is far from being the same everywhere. The dolmens of Brittany have sepulchral chambers with long pa.s.sages leading to them; those of the neighborhood of Paris have wide covered avenues with a very short entrance lobby. In the south of France we see nothing but rectangular compartments formed of four or five colossal stones. All this is true enough; but if we examine our old cathedrals of comparatively modern date, the common origin of which is never disputed, we note differences no less remarkable. On the other hand it is urged that if megalithic monuments were all erected by one race, the objects they contain would certainly resemble each other to a great extent. But even this is not the case. The hatchets so numerous in the west of France are rare in the south; those from the Algerian monuments are always of coa.r.s.e workmans.h.i.+p, whilst those of Denmark are highly finished. We might multiply instances, but as a matter of fact do we not see the same kind of thing in the present day, in spite of our railways and other modes of rapid communication, and the perpetual intermarrying of modern peoples? Compare the ornaments of Normandy with those of the Basque provinces, those of Brittany with those of Burgundy, and surely the differences between them will be found to be as great as we note in the weapons and ornaments of the builders of the megalithic monuments.

To sum up: according to the opinion of many eminent savants, numerous races have been in the habit of raising megalithic monuments, the form of which varies AD INFINITUM according to the genius or the circ.u.mstances of each race, and according to the nature of the soil or of the material at the disposal of the builders. All, however, belong to one general type, and bear witness to one general influence, which extended throughout the whole world at a certain epoch. M. Cazalis de Fondouce, from whom I borrow these last observations, would probably find it as difficult to say how a general influence was extended to races of which he denies the common parentage, and the relations and contemporaneity he can but guess at, as I myself should -- granting the contrary hypothesis -- to explain how a people could wander about the world in incessant migrations without modifying its own habits or communicating to others its rites and its mode of erecting monuments.

We cannot, however, fail to recognize the evidence of facts. We can understand how men were everywhere impelled to raise mounds above the bodies of their ancestors, to perpetuate their memory or to enclose their mortal remains between flat stones to save them from being crushed by the weight of earth above them. We may even, by straining a point, admit the idea that a large cist developed into a dolmen, but when in districts separated by enormous distances we see monuments with the wall pierced with a circular opening or combining an interior crypt with an external mound and dolmen, it is impossible to look upon these close resemblances as the result of an accidental coincidence, and equally impossible to fail to conclude that the men whose funeral rites were remarkable for such close similarity belonged to the same race.

What then was this race? Are these monuments witnesses of the great Aryan immigration which was for so long supposed to have spread from India over the continents of Asia and Europe, and of which the Indo-European languages were said to preserve the memory? Or is it really the fact that a relations.h.i.+p of language does not imply a relations.h.i.+p of race? Were the builders of the dolmens Celts or Gauls, Ligures or Cymri? was Henry Martin right in ascribing to the Cimerii of Scandinavia the erection in the Bronze age of the megaliths of Ireland? Was it the Turanians, with their wors.h.i.+p of ancestor's, their respect for the tombs of their forefather's, and their desire to perpetuate their memory to eternity, who set up the dolmens of Brittany? Was it not perhaps rather the Iberians, whose descendants still people Spain and the north of Africa? According to Maury, the distribution of the megalithic monuments of Europe marks the last refuge of vanquished Neolithic races, fleeing before their conquerors. All these hypotheses are plausible, all can be defended by arguments, the weight of which it is impossible to deny, but none are capable of conclusive proof, none can finally convince the student.[168]

An old Welsh poet, referring to the long barrows of his native land, says that they are altogether inexplicable, and that it is impossible to decide who set them up or who is buried beneath them. And surely this ancient bard[169] is right even now. Vainly do we question these silent witnesses of the remote past. They give us no answer, and we can but repeat here what we said at the beginning of this inquiry: Human science is powerless to lift the veil biding the early history of humanity. Will it ever be so? Or will the day yet dawn when the veil will be rent asunder at last? Time alone can solve this question, which is one of those secrets of the future as difficult to fathom as those of the past.

CHAPTER VI

Industry, Commerce, and Social Organization; Fights, Wounds and Trepanation.

When we consider the discoveries connected with the Stone age as a whole, we are struck with the immense numbers of weapons of every kind and of every variety of form found in different regions of the globe. The Roman domination extended over a great part of the Old World, and it lasted for many centuries. Everywhere this people, ill.u.s.trious amongst the nations, has left tokens of its power and of its industry. Roman weapons, jewelry, and coins occupy considerable s.p.a.ces in our museums; but numerous as are these relics of the Romans, they are far inferior in number to the objects dating from prehistoric times, and flints worked by the hand of man have been picked up by thousands in the last few years, forming incontestable witnesses of the rapid growth of a large population.

One important point remains obscure. Schmerling has excavated fifty caves in Belgium, and only found human relics in two or three of them; and of six hundred explored by Lund in Brazil, only six contained human bones. Similar results were obtained in the excavations of the mounds of North America, as well as in the caves of France. M. Hamy, in a book published a few years ago, only mentions twelve finds of human bones, which could, without any doubt, be dated from Palaeolithic times. True, this number has been added to by recent discoveries, but it is still quite insignificant. It is the same thing with the kitchen-middings and the Lake settlements. This paucity of actual human remains forms a gap in the evidence relating to prehistoric man, which disturbances and displacements do not sufficiently account for, and to which we shall refer again when speaking of prehistoric tombs.

Worked flints are generally found in numbers in one place, probably formerly a station or centre of human habitation. Men were beginning to form themselves into societies, and the dwellings, first of the family and then of the tribe, rapidly gathered together near some river rich in fish, or some forest stocked with game affording plenty of food easily obtained. The caves also afford proofs of the number of men who inhabited them. In one alone, near Cracow, Ossowski discovered 876 bone implements, more than 3,000 flint objects, and thousands of fragments of pottery. From the Veyrier cave, near Mount Saleve, were taken nearly 1,000 stone implements; from those of Pet.i.t Morin, 2,000 arrow-heads; from that of Cottes, on the banks of the Gartampe, more than 264 pounds' weight of flints, some of the Mousterien and others of the Madeleine type, mixed with the bones of the rhinoceros, and of several large beasts of prey of indeterminate. species. The Abbe Ducrost picked up 4,000 flints in one dwelling alone at Solutre, where the soil is calcareous and flint is not native, so that it must have been brought from a distance. More than 8,000 different objects were taken from the fine Neolithic station of Ors in the isle of Oleron; 12,000 chips of stone, bearing marks of human workmans.h.i.+p, were picked up in the Thayngen Cave, and more than 80,000 in the different caves of Belgium. The shelter of Chaleux alone yielded 30,000 pieces of stone, at every stage of workmans.h.i.+p, from the waste of the manufactory to the highly finished implement. Other explorers have been no less fortunate. The Marquis of Wavrin found in the environs of Grez no less than 60,000 worked stones belonging to no less than thirty different types, chiefly arrow-heads, some triangular, others almond-shaped, others again cutting transversely, some with and some without feathers, some stalked, others not; in a word, arrows of every known type. Nothing but an actual visit to the Royal Museum of Brussels can give any idea of the importance of the discoveries made in Belgium.

The environs of Paris are, however, no less rich. As early as Palaeolithic times the valleys of the Seine and its tributaries were evidently inhabited by a numerous population. M. Riviere mentions a station near Clamart, where, in a limited s.p.a.ce, he picked up more than 900 flints, some worked, others mere chips, many of which bad been subjected to heat. A sand-pit of Levallois-Perret yielded 4,000 stone objects, and on the plateau of Champigny, full of such terrible memories for the people of France, were found nearly 1,200 flints, knives, polished hatchets, lance heads and sc.r.a.pers, mixed with numerous fragments of hand-made pottery without ornamentation.

Are yet other examples needed? At. de Mortillet estimates at more than 25,000 the number of specimens found on the plateau of Saint Acheul, the scene of the earliest discoveries that revealed the existence of man in Quaternary times; and the station of Concise, on Lake Neuchatel, which is one of the most ancient in Switzerland, yielded a yet more considerable number. Many have, however, been lost or destroyed; the ballast of the railway skirting the lake contains thousands of worked stones and of pieces of the waste left in making them, all of which were taken from the bed of the lake. It must not be forgotten that it is only of late years that the importance of these relics of the past has been recognized and that any one has dreamt of preserving or of studying them.

The excavation of a gravel pit at Dundrum (County Down, Ireland) yielded 1,100 flint implements, and M. Belluci himself picked up in the province of Perouse more than 17,000 pieces, chiefly spear-, lance-, or arrow-heads, belonging to six different types. The Broholm Museum contains 72,409 weapons and implements, all found in Denmark.

We can quote similar facts in other countries. Prehistoric stations are numerous in the Sahara and throughout the Wady el Mya, in Algeria, and we have already spoken of the numerous specimens found near Wargla. The workshops in this district are generally surrounded by immense numbers of ostrich eggs, which seem to indicate that that bird was already domesticated.[170]

In America, Dr. Abbott has sent to the Peabody Museum more than 20,000 stones, which were collected by him at Trenton, on the banks of the Delaware, and quite recently I was told that in sinking a well in Illinois the workmen came upon a deposit of more than 1,000 worked flints, all of oval form. Every one knows the importance of the recent discoveries at Was.h.i.+ngton, and we might multiply examples AD INFINITUM, for everywhere explorers come upon undoubted traces of the active work and intelligence of comparatively dense populations, all of whom had attained to about the same degree of development.

These numerous deposits often mark the, site of regular workshops, tokens of the earliest attempt at social organization. In no other way can we explain the piles of flints in every stage of workmans.h.i.+p lying beside the lumps from which they were detached. One of the most celebrated of these workshops is that of Grand-Pressigny, chief town of the canton of the department of Indre-et-Loire, which is admirably situated between two picturesque rivers, the Claise and the Creuse.

The flint implements of Grand-Pressigny, of which specimens can be seen in all the museums of Europe, are some sixteen inches long, of light color, pointed at one end and square at the other. One face is rough, the other chipped into three oblong pieces, whilst the sides are roughly hewn into saw-like teeth. If we examine these flints closely we can easily make out the exact point, the EYE, as workmen call it, where the stone was struck. At Charbonniere, on the banks of the Saone, to quote other examples, in a radius of less than a mile, were found weapons, tools, and nuclei, which may be compared with those of Grand-Pressigny. In some places the collections of flints still remaining look as if they had been used for road-making. In some cases hatchets, knives, and sc.r.a.pers seem to have been buried in pits. Were these the reserve stores of the tribe, or the so-called CACHES of the merchants?

It is difficult merely to name the different workshops or manufactories discovered in the last few years. We must, however, endeavor to mention the most important, for these workshops, we must repeat, are an important proof of the existence of a society of organized working communities. We meet with them on the sh.o.r.es of the bay of Kiel, in the island of Anholt, in the midst of the Kattegat, and on the borders of the Petchoura, and of the Soula, among the Samoieds. Virchow discovered an arrow-head manufactory on the sh.o.r.es of Lake Burtneek, and in 1884 the Moscow Society of Natural Sciences made known the existence of important workshops near the Vetluga River, in the province of Kostroma, so that we know that in remote prehistoric times men lived and fought in a rigorous climate in districts but spa.r.s.ely populated in our own day.

There is nothing to surprise us in all these facts. Recently near the Yenesei River, in the heart of Siberia, were found bronze daggers, hatchets and bridle bits (Fig. 71), all bearing witness in the beauty of their workmans.h.i.+p to a more advanced state of civilization than the Lake Dwellings or megalithic monuments farther south. Many of them are ornamented with figures of animals, so that at an epoch less remote, it is true, than the one we have been considering, but still far removed from our own, we find that there was an intelligent race, with artistic tastes, living in a country now so intensely cold as to be uninhabitable to all but a few miserable nomad Tartars.

At Spiennes, near Mons, a field was discovered, known as the CAMP DES CAYAUX, strewn with flints, some uncut, others hewn, together with knives and hatchets innumerable. There were also centres of manufacture at Hoxne and Brandon, in England, at Bellaria in Bologna, and at Rome on the Tiburtine Way. At Ponte-Molle, where worked flints were discovered for the first time in Italy a few years ago, a workshop was found, remarkable for the great number of stags'

antlers, from which the middle part had been removed, doubtless to be used as handles for tools. M. de Rossi, who gives us these details, thinks that this station was inhabited in the Paleolithic period. In the settlement of Concise have been found not only stone implements, but a great many articles made of bone, so that this place was evidently an important manufacturing centre. Knives, stilettos, and arrow heads were turned out here, and in the hands of skilful workmen the tusks of the boars, which abounded at this time in Switzerland, were converted into excellent chisels.

FIGURE 71

Bronze objects found at Krasnojarsk (Siberia).

To name the districts where tools were manufactured in prehistoric times in France would be to give a list of all the departments. In the commune of Saint-Julien du Saut we find a large manufactory where every division of the Stone age is fully represented, from the time of the simply chipped hatchet to that of the polished implement of rare perfection. Everything bears witness to the prolonged residence of man in a neighborhood which offered the attraction of vast deposits of chalk with bands of flint that supplied alike weapons and tools. Amongst others, we must name the so-called ATELIER DE LA TREICHE, near Toul, which extends for an area of about a hundred acres, that of Bonaruc, near Dax; surrounded by waste lands covered with a scanty vegetation; that of Rochebertier (Charente), which probably dates from the Madeleine period; and that of Ecorche-Boeuf, near Perigueux. The Abbe Cochet tells us of an atelier in the Aulne valley, and Maurice Sand of another near La Chatre, where we meet with the most ancient traces of man in Berry. In the fields, near an alignment not far from Autun, were picked up numbers of hatchets of bard rock, barbed arrows, flakes of flint worked into sc.r.a.pers or chisels, whilst near them were the very polishers on which they had been pointed.

We have just spoken of polishers, and we said some time ago that it was by prolonged rubbing that the remarkable weapons of Neolithic times were produced. We must add now that a whole series of the polishers used are to be seen on the right bank of the Loing, near Nemours; one of which is a regular table (Fig. 72), on which can be made out no less than fifty grooves and twenty-five cup-like depressions.

FIGURE 72

Prehistoric polisher, near the ford of Beaumoulin, Nemours.

One would have expected to find the ground near these polishers covered with flakes of flint and pieces of tools of all kinds, but nothing of the kind has been discovered; a fact which leads its to suppose that the workmen only came down into the valley to finish off their weapons by polis.h.i.+ng them.

At the period we are considering all the continents were peopled, and we must repeat, for it is the most important point of our present study, that the civilization attained to by the inhabitants was everywhere almost identical. Thus we find centres of manufacture similar to those of Europe at the foot of the mountains of Tunis and of Algeria. In one of the latter, at Ha.s.si al Rhatmaia, the knives were piled up in one place, the sc.r.a.pers in another, and the arrow-heads in a third. In this disposition M. Rabourdin thinks he sees a sign of the division of labor, one of the most important features of modern progress. M. Arcelin mentions a similar deposit on the summit of the Jebel Kalabshee, near Esneh in Egypt, and a few years ago another was found in Palestine, near the ancient Berytus, containing great numbers of hatchets, saws, sc.r.a.pers, and all the implements characteristic of the Stone age; whilst amongst them lay the blocks from which they had been cut. Asia Minor was evidently an important manufacturing centre during the Stone age, and, as a matter of course, it must have had a considerable population; and even in America discoveries of similar extent have been made. At Kinosha, in Wisconsin, Lapham made out a manufactory of flint and quartzite arrow-heads, which dates from prehistoric times, and quite recently a yet more important centre of industry has been discovered at St. Andrew (Winnipeg).

The manufactories of Spiennes and Brandon deserve special notice, as they show us how our ancestors got the flint they used instead of metal. At Spiennes,[171] the excavations were begun in the open air, then the chalk containing the flint was reached by the sinking of vertical shafts, many of which were as much as forty feet in depth. These shafts were connected with each other by galleries running in every direction, but always following the belts of flints. Cuttings have brought to light the very implements of the ancient miners. They were of the simplest description, such as picks made of stag-horn and heavy stone hammers, all alike bearing marks of long service.[172]

Similar results were obtained in England. Canon Greenwell explored near Brandon, in Suffolk, a series of 254 shafts, known in the neighborhood as Grime's Graves. As at Spiennes, the shafts were connected by galleries from three to five feet high, and one of theta was twenty-seven feet long. The shafts and galleries had been hollowed out with the help of picks exactly like those found in Belgium; seventy-nine were picked up that had been thrown away by the workmen.[173]

Some few years ago MM. Cartailhac and Boule discovered one of these primitive quarries at Mur de Barrez, the chief town of the department of Aveyron.[174]

They made out eight shafts in the face of a layer of limestone some eighty-one feet long, and at every turn of their excavations they came to fresh shafts. These shafts opened out towards the top like funnels, and the), were not more than three feet three inches below the surface, the flint having been struck at that depth (Fig. 73). These shafts were, in many cases, continued by galleries, as seen in our ill.u.s.tration (Fig. 74), or by trenches, where the light is, however, more or less shut out by small landslips. It is still easy, in spite of this, to make out the floor of the mine, for it is trodden hard by the feet of the ancient miners. Traces of charcoal, too, reveal the path they took, and we learn at the same time that they used fire to help them in their work.

FIGURE 73

Section of a flint mine; T vegetable earth, C pure limestone, C M Marly limestone, S flint.

M. Boule,[175] from whom we borrow these details, cannot restrain his astonishment at the practical knowledge shown by these prehistoric miners. He tells us that they sometimes left the flint standing as pillars at pretty short intervals, or they propped up the galleries with even more resistant material, cementing them with clay or with calcareous earth taken from the detritus. In spite of these precautions, landslips frequently occurred, and implements of stag-horn (Fig. 75) have often been flattened by the fall of the roof of the gallery. It is really curious to find implements of an exactly similar kind used for exactly similar purposes at Spiennes, Brandon, Mur de Barrez, and at Cissbury, to which, however, we shall have to refer again. In the shafts of Aveyron, as in those of England, the marks of blows of the picks are still to be seen, and in many cases a flint or horn-pick point is still imbedded in the rock or limestone, as if the miner had but just left his work.

FIGURE 74

Plan of a gallery, half destroyed in making the excavation which revealed its existence. U gallery still visible; G' gallery destroyed by the excavation.

In this last example of what has been done in France, we must also add that of the shafts of Nointel (Oise) and those discovered in Maine by M. de Baye, in both of which were found nodules of flint in different stages of preparation, together with some stag-horn picks. In none of these excavations was any metal implement found, or any trace of the use of metal, so that we must conclude that the mines date from Neolithic times.

We have seen how man gradually brought to perfection the tools and weapons which were at first so clumsy. The growth of industry led to the birth of commerce, or, to speak more accurately, to that of barter. From the time of the earliest migrations intercourse was begun, or rather was carried on, between the tribes, as they gradually dispersed, often travelling considerable distances from each other, and fresh proofs of these relations are continually brought to light as we become better acquainted with prehistoric times. The flints worked by the cave-men of Belgium, the fossil sh.e.l.ls so numerous at Chaleux, in the Frontal and Nuton caves, at Thayngen on the frontier between Switzerland and Germany, in Italy, in the stations of anterior date to the TERREMARE beds, have been found the sh.e.l.ls of the pearl oyster of the Indian Ocean, whilst in the caves of the south of France, such as the Madeleine, that of Cro-Magnon, Bize in Herault, and Solutre on the banks of the Saone have been picked up the sh.e.l.ls of Arctic marine mollusca. The cave-man of Gourdan was decked with sh.e.l.ls from the Mediterranean, and the man of Mentone in his turn wore a head-dress made of Atlantic sh.e.l.ls. Fossil sh.e.l.ls were also much sought after; we have alluded to those from Champagne found in Belgium; others from the sh.e.l.l-marl of Touraine and Anjou had been taken into the caves of Perigord, whilst sea-urchins from the cretaceous strata of the south of France were found in a prehistoric station of Auvergne, and M. Ma.s.senat picked up at Laugerie-Ba.s.se two specimens of a species not met with anywhere but in the Eocene deposits of the isle of Wight. The Neolithic station of Champigny, near Paris, has yielded some objects from the Alps, and from Belgium, from the Vosges Mountains, and the Puy de Dome.

FIGURE 75

Picks, hammers, and mattocks made of stag-horn.

In the caves of Perigord were also found fragments of hyaline quartz, which must have been brought from the Alps or the Pyrenees. In Brittany and in Marne flints foreign to these granite districts are numerous; and Dr. Prunieres tells us that similar discoveries were made under the megalithic monuments of France, and that neither in the eroded limestone districts of Lozere, known locally as LES CAUSSES, nor under the dolmens of Haute-Vienne, were found any but implements made of rock not native to the country.

Hatchets, daggers, and nuclei, or as they are characteristically called by the country people LIVRES DE BEURRE, from Grand-Pressigny, have been picked up in the bed of the Seine, at Limagne in Auvergne, in Brittany, at Saint Medard near Bordeaux, on the banks of the Meuse, and even as far north as the Shetland Islands. At Concise was found red coral from the Mediterranean, whilst the yellow amber of the Baltic was picked up in the Lake Dwellings of Switzerland, beneath the dolmens of Brittany, in sepulchral caves, such as those of Oyes (Marne) or Lombrives (Ariege), beneath the megalithic tomb of La Roquette, at Saint Pargoue (Herault) beneath the dolmen of Grailhe (Gard), at Malpas, and at Baume (Ardeche).[176] These are nearly all Neolithic tombs, though some few of them may date from the beginning of the Bronze age; but the cave-men of France owned amber even earlier than this, for five fragments have been found in the Aurensan Cave near Bagneres-de-Bigorre, which was inhabited in Palaeolithic times. Jadeite and nephrite[177] are met with in the Lake Dwellings of Switzerland and Bavaria, as in the caves of Liguria and Sardinia; chloromelanite[178] in France, and obsidian[179] in Lorraine, in the island of Pianosa and in the Cyclades. We have already spoken of the calaite[180] found beneath the dolmens of Brittany, and we may add now that it has also been found in the caves of Portugal and beneath the megalithic monuments of the south of France.