Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples Part 14

FIGURE 81

Trepanned Peruvian skull.

A few years ago a sepulchre was opened at Chaclacayo, at the foot of Mount Chosica, not far from Lima. In this tomb lay three mummies, of a man, a woman, and a child. Near them lay a human skull, having about the middle of the forehead an opening, measuring some two and a half by two inches. It is of polygonal form, and eight different incisions can easily be made out, which appear to have been made with some notched stone implement. On raising a strip of skin, still adhering to the skull, there was seen on the front part of the sagittal suture a very small perforation, the result either of a wound or of an operation which bad taken place during life. It has been suggested that the piece of bone taken from the skull had been used to make a lance or arrow-head, which was superst.i.tiously supposed by the owner to ensure his victory. This is, however, a mere suggestion, of which no proof can be given.

In other party of America discoveries have been made of trepanned skulls, supposed to date from even more remote times than those we have just been considering. A few years ago Professor Putnam found, in the State of Ohio, some old wells idled with cinders and rubbish of all kinds. From one of them, which was deeper than the others, he took several crania, some of which bore evident traces of trepanation. From a mound near Dallas (Illinois) were taken more than one hundred skeletons, all of adults, placed side by side in a crouching att.i.tude. Every one of them had a round opening on the left temple, and in some of these wounds the flint implement which had produced them was still imbedded. It is very evident that we have here tokens of some funereal rite, the meaning of which is uncertain, though it was evidently practised also in districts very remote from Illinois. To mention yet other examples, the excavation of a tumulus of irregular form near Devil's River (Michigan) has brought to light five skeletons buried u right, whilst a sixth lay in the centre of the tumulus, which was evidently, if w e may so express it, the place of honor. On each of the six crania a perforation had been made after death.

A number of crania and parts of crania on which trepanation had been performed have also been taken from several mounds on Chamber's Island, from beneath the mound in the neighborhood of the Sable River, near Lake Huron, and near the Red River[198] Gillman thinks that the Michigan trepanations, which bad been made with clumsy tools, were simply holes for hanging up skulls as trophies, as is still customary amongst the Dyaks of Borneo; but this seems scarcely a tenable hypothesis, for as a rule the skeletons lying in their last home are complete. Quite recently were discovered, beneath a tumulus near Rock River, eight skeletons, the skull of one of which bore a circular perforation made during life, which rather upsets Gillman's theory.

But to resume our narrative. The trepanations reported from North America are generally posthumous, and we can prove nothing as to their origin. Were they marks of honor made in some religious rite? Were they openings to allow the spirit of the departed to revisit the body it had abandoned? or, to suggest a far more worldly and revolting motive, were they merely holes through which to pick out the brains of the dead. A missionary, in a letter dated from Fort Pitt (Canada) in 1880, describes the mode of scalping practised by the Redskins, and says that they often take a round piece of skull as well as the scalp. May not this be a case of atavism, or the transmission of a custom from one generation to another, for the origin of which we must go back to the most remote ages? In the present state of our knowledge, insufficient as it is, this explanation is the most. plausible.

It is even more difficult to come to a satisfactory conclusion with regard to European examples of the practice we have been describing. Trepanation was certainly practised in the treatment of certain diseases of the bone, such as osteitis or caries. Professor Parrot mentions a case worth quoting.[199] A few years ago several skeletons were found at Bray-sur-Seine (Seine-et-Marne) with numerous objects, such as polished stone hatchets, bone stilettos, sh.e.l.l necklaces and ornaments, all undoubtedly Neolithic. One of the crania had been trepanned, the position of the operation showing that its object had been to treat an osteitis. The operation had succeeded, and the cicatrization of the bones, both about the wound and in the parts originally affected, shows that recovery was complete. This is the only example we have of an operation executed with a view to curing a disease that can actually be seen, and it enables us to conclude that these men, of whom we know so little, had some notion of surgery. Were trepanations also practised to cure epilepsy or to heal mental affections? From the earliest times the seat of these troubles was always supposed to be the brain, and an ancient book of medicine recommends as a remedy the sc.r.a.ping of the outside of the skull.[200] In a recent book ("De la Trepanation dans l'Epilepsie par le Traumatisme du Crane"), Echeverria mentions several cases of cure by trepanation when epilepsy had been the result of an injury. Observation may have led our prehistoric ancestors to discover this. May we date this custom then from prehistoric times? It is very difficult to decide with certainty either for or against it.

Of one thing, however, we may be quite certain. The cranial perforations so much like one another reported from districts so remote and different in character, cannot be accidental. It is impossible to attribute to chance the occurrence of injuries of exactly the same size in crania of totally different origins. Setting aside the Entre-Roches skull, the antiquity of which does not seem to us sufficiently established, we find this custom maintained throughout the period characterized by the use of polished stone weapons and implements, the erection of megalithic monuments, and the domestication of animals. It was practised by the men of the cave of L'HOMME MORT at the beginning of the Neolithic period, and was still in use at Moret when metals began to be known. The discoveries of Dr. w.a.n.kel, the excavations of the tumulus of Guisseny, prove that trepanation was continued throughout the Bronze age, whilst the Jeuilly and Limet tombs show that it was not discontinued even in Merovingian times.

The long continuance of such a practice is a very interesting fact, and we may mention a yet more curious one. How are we to explain trepanations that had no apparent motive on crania showing no symptoms of disease? How account for the repet.i.tion at different tunes of this operation, first on the living subject and then on the corpse, as at St. Affrique, Bougon (Fig. 82), at Feigneux (Oise), where Dr. Topinard has recently made excavations in a Neolithic cave and reports that a dolichocephalic skull of the same type as the crania of the cave of L'HOMME MORT, belonging to a man of about thirty years of age, bore two perforations, one made during life, the other after death? The first measured two and a third by two and a half inches, and was surrounded by scratches, showing how clumsy the operator had been.[201]

FIGURE 82

Skull from the Bougon dolmen (Deux-Sevres), seen in profile.

In nearly every case the subjects operated on were young, and long survived the operation. The knowledge of this fact was from the first a very useful guide in the study of the subject of trepanation, and eagerly pursued researches constantly confirm it. One skull, for instance, from the cave of L'HOMME MORT (Fig. 83), had a large opening produced partly by an old operation and partly by two posthumous trepanations. The subject had been trepanned in childhood or early youth. There could be no doubt on that point; cicatrization had been complete, the bony tissue having returned to its original condition. Then after death, at an adult age, the relations or friends of the deceased had cut out further round portions of the skull as near as possible to the old wound, probably with a view to keeping these pieces as amulets.

FIGURE 83

Trepanned prehistoric skull.

This was to Broca a flash of illuminating light, and according to him was in some cases a religious rite, a ceremony of initiation, perhaps even a custom inculcated by an established religion. The child who had been subjected to it and had survived -- as probably most of the victims did survive, -- attained to a certain position and celebrity in his life, and after his death the fragments of his skull, especially those portions near the old wound, became treasured relics, and were in the end buried with their fortunate possessor on his death.

This superst.i.tion appears to have long survived even in historic times, and a Gallic chain is quoted[202] on which hung a round piece of skull with three holes in it. In. deed, these ornaments were so much sought after that counterfeits of them were made; at least, we cannot in any other way account for the occurrence of objects exactly resembling round pieces of human crania, but in reality made out of pieces of a stag's antler found in the Baumes-Chaudes Cave.

Yet another point deserves mention. It was evidently considered undesirable that the crania from which pieces had been taken should be left in a mutilated condition, and therefore pieces front other crania were taken to fill up the gap, so that, says Broca,[203]

a new life was evidently supposed to await the dead, for otherwise what object can the rest.i.tution have served?

Dr. Prunieres is also of opinion[204] that the introduction into the crania of certain deceased persons of round pieces from other skulls implies the belief in another life. This explanation, hypothetical as it is, is really very plausible, and it is a pleasant thought that our remote ancestors had faith in a future life; which faith is alike the greatest honor and the greatest comfort of humanity. Is not yet another more striking proof of the belief in a second existence to be found in the number of objects placed in tombs at all periods of time and in every part of the world? It is this belief, raising man as it does above the material needs of his daily life, which forms the true grandeur of the human race, and if a nation once loses it it is sure to relapse into barbarism.

When trepanning was the fas.h.i.+on there is no doubt that the operation was performed in many different ways. Posthumous trepanations were accomplished with the aid of a flint implement used as a chisel or a saw. There was greater difficulty about an operation on a living subject. Broca is of opinion that it was done with a drill turned round and round in the skull in the way the French shepherds still treat diseases of the crania in their sheep. The elliptical form of the wound seemed to him to prove this, and he was further of opinion that when an opening had been drilled in the skull at the point chosen, the trepanation was completed by sc.r.a.ping the bone with a small flint blade.[205] Discoveries made since the death of the great French anthropologist, however, compel us to modify this opinion. The inflammation of the bone noticed along the edges of the trepanation proves that a notched implement was used to saw out the piece of skull.[206]

However the operation may have been performed, it is not one of great danger to the patient or of great difficulty to the operator. Experiments on animals with Quaternary flint implements have always been successful, and have had no tragic results, which is the best proof we can possibly give.

The size of the perforations made varies ad infinitum. One, the largest known, is described which is no less than sixteen inches in diameter.[207] Examples are known of the trepanation of every part of the skull, even of the forehead, which at one time was supposed to have escaped. We have ourselves given instances of frontal trepanation, and Dr. Prunieres mentions eleven cases in which the forehead had been operated on.

To conclude, we must repeat that trepanation is not really a dangerous operation, and the reason it is nearly always followed by the death of the subject in our own time is because it is never attempted except in desperate cases, and the fatal result is really caused by the cerebral disease, on account of which the operation was performed. History tells us of its practice in very ancient times; Hippocrates speaks of it as often resorted to by Greek physicians. It is performed in the present day by the Negritos of Papua and the natives of Australia and of some of the South Sea Islands, where it is considered efficacious in many maladies. We also find it practised by the rough miners of Cornwall and the wild mountaineers of Montenegro.[208] An army doctor who travelled in Montenegro a few years ago said that it was no rare thing to meet men who had been subjected to trepanation seven, eight, or even nine times. It is an interesting question, though we must not enter into it here, whether many races could stand such a number of operations as this.

The only instance we know in the present day of trepanation practised as a religious rite, is met with among the Kabyles, who are established at the foot of Mount Aures on the south of the Atlas. The operation is performed among them by the THEBIBE, one of their priests, by the aid of a simple gimlet which he turns rapidly round between his fingers. Among the Kabyles are men who have submitted to an operation of this kind several times.

We have now pa.s.sed in review the weapons of prehistoric peoples, the wounds they caused, and the modes of healing them known to our ancestors; we have still to study the modes of defence resorted to by them in face of the many dangers by which they were surrounded; but the importance of this subject is such as to deserve separate consideration.

CHAPTER VII

Camps, Fortifications, Vitrified Forts; Santorin; The Towns upon the Hill of Hissarlik.

Combativeness, to use the language of phrenology, is one of the most lively instincts of humanity. The Bible tells us of the struggle between the sons of Adam, and shows us might making right ever since the days of primeval man. History is but one long account of wars and conquests, victories or defeats, and progress is chiefly marked in inventions which made battles more sanguinary and added to the number of victims slaughtered. At the very dawn of humanity man learned to make weapons; very soon, however, weapons ceased to appear sufficient. The first fortification was doubtless the cave, which its owner strengthened by closing the entrance with blocks of stone and piles of broken rock, or by digging deep trenches about it.

Population rapidly increased and war was declared between tribe and tribe, nation and nation, race and race. Terrible must have been the struggles between invaders and the original possessors of the soil. Means of defence were multiplied to keep pace with new modes of attack, and our ancestors of the Stone age were intelligent enough to make places of refuge in which on necessity they could shelter their wives and children, and later, when they became sedentary, their flocks and their stores of grain. In many different localities we find the remains of camps and fortifications, which, to avoid using a more ambitious term, we may characterize generally as enclosures.[209]

These primitive enclosures, says Bertrand in his "Archeologie Celtiquc et Gauloise," may have been very much more numerous than is supposed, if we include amongst them, as it appears we ought, many ruins long thought to date from the Roman era.

There is no doubt as to the purpose served by the camps, but we are not prepared to speak as positively as does Bertrand as to their origin, and the difficulty of deciding is very greatly increased on account of these camps having been successively occupied at different epochs by different peoples. Bearing in mind this reservation, we will now sum up to the best of our ability all that is so far known about the most important remains. .h.i.therto examined.

The residence of prehistoric man in the rich districts between the Sambre and the Meuse is proved by worked flints, fragments of pottery, and human bones dating from most remote times. The stations successively occupied were situated near watercourses or copious springs, and, where possible, on isolated escarped plateaux surrounded by ravines. Hastedon, about a mile and a quarter from Namur, is one of the best examples we can quote.[210] The camp, first made out in 1865, formed a long square, covering some thirteen hectares, or about thirty-two acres. It is situated on an isolated mound connected with the main plateau by an isthmus 227 feet long, and is protected on the south and west by a deep ravine: To these natural defences men had added important works to those parts that were accessible. The cutting of trenches a few years ago brought to light walls of a mean thickness of more than nine feet, formed of ma.s.ses of rock and sand and round pieces of wood parallel with a REVETEMENT of dry stones surmounted by a palisade consisting of three pieces of wood parallel with the walls, and seven perpendicular traverses. All the wood was charred; the besieged had evidently been driven out by fire. Excavations led to the finding of Roman coins; this and the resemblance of the palisades to those described by Caesar,[211] the very name of Hastedon, and the tradition everywhere prevalent in the district, that this bad been the site of a Gallic Roman camp, led to the general adoption of that opinion. In fact, Napoleon III. actually ordered excavations to be made in the hope of finding traces of the Atuatuques, one of the roost warlike of the tribes of northern Gaul; but side by side with historic relics were no less than ten thousand flints. These are chiefly merely chips or nuclei which had served as hammers, or long thin slices, with some few arrow- and lance-beads often skilfully cut, some polished hatchets, and saws with fine teeth. Nearly all are notched and worn with use, which does away with the idea that the place where they were found was the site of a workshop such as I have already described. With these worked flints were found some fragments of coa.r.s.e pottery, which could not possibly be confounded with Roman or Gallic work. The flints and pottery, and the walls put together without cement, point to the conclusion that if the camp of Hastedon was occupied by the Roman legions, it was long previous to their day inhabited by some Neolithic race, ignorant of the use of any but stone weapons and implements.

The camp of Pont-de-Bonn in the commune of Modave (Namur) very much resembles in its arrangement that of Hastedon.[212] A mound stands out upon the plain protected on the north and west by rocks difficult of access and connected with the main plateau by a very narrow tongue of land. Outside we can make out regular trenches parallel with each other, and connected by a wall of masonry, at the foot of which wall were picked up a good many iron nails. Inside the ENCEINTE itself worked flints were a.s.sociated with Roman coins. Are not these proofs in the first place of a long Neolithic occupation, then of the residence of Gallic Romans, and yet later of even more modern people of whom the masonry walls and iron nails are relics?

Limburg also contains some defensive works, many centuries old, which are as yet but little known. We may mention amongst them the so-called d.y.k.e of Zeedyck, near Tongres, a formidable intrenchment some 2,186 yards long by more than 325 feet wide at the base, and of a height varying from 49 to 65 feet; the earthen ramparts of Willem on the Geule, the not less important ones of Houlem, with many others far away from the great highways of communication, but within the limits of the two provinces of Liege and Limburg.[213]

A few years ago Bertrand said that there are in France some four hundred earthen ENCEINTES, only sixty of which contain relics connecting them with the Gallic Romans. Since Bertrand's announcement this number has been greatly increased, thanks to eagerly prosecuted local researches. De Pulligny mentions a hundred in Upper Normandy[214]; Martinet says they are very numerous in Berry; one of the most remarkable, the quadrilateral of Haute-Brenne, covered an area of nearly three thousand acres.[215] Amongst the forests on the Vosges Mountains were discovered long single and double walls, the course of which follows the crest of the ramparts overlooking the valley of the Zorn, between Lutzelbourg and Saverne.[216] At Rosmeur, on Penmarch Point (Finistere), Du Chatellier excavated two tumuli which appear to have been connected with a series of defensive works encircling the whole promontory.[217] It would be merely fastidious to multiply instances, we will content ourselves with describing a few of the most interesting of these antique fortifications.[218]

The camp of Cha.s.sey (Saone-et-Loire) may be compared with those of Belgium. It is situated on a plateau 2,440 feet long by a width varying from 360 to 672 feet. A huge natural rocky barrier rises on the south and east, whilst on the northeast and southwest we find two important intrenchments made of huge blocks of stone with a REVETEMENT of earth. One of these intrenchments is 45, the other only 29 feet high. There is no trace inside of springs, and the inhabitants must always have had to obtain their water-supply by artificial means. The cisterns now in this camp appear to have been dug out with iron implements, and are certainly of later date than the first occupation of the plateau. Numerous objects picked up in the Cha.s.sey Camp belong to Neolithic times, but the people who have occupied it since those remote days, the men of the Bronze and Iron ages, the Gauls, the Romans, and the Merovingians, have so turned over the ground that products of industries, completely strange to each other, are everywhere mixed together in inextricable confusion.[219]

There were originally a good many hearths about the camp, and it was near to one of them that the spoon was found, figured in an earlier chapter of this book (Fig. 25). With it were picked up polished fibrolite, basalt, chloromelanite, serpentine, and diorite hatchets; evidently made in the neighborhood, as is proved beyond a doubt by the numerous chips and partly worked pieces lying about, as well as the discovery of no less than thirty polishers, many of them showing signs of long service. Bone implements of all kinds and whistles made of the phalanges of oxen are also constantly found. Even if the presence of these objects does not enable us to come to any final conclusion, they are at least most useful and interesting in enabling us to put together little by little a picture of the life of the most ancient inhabitants of France.

The camp of Catenoy, Dear Liancourt (Oise) is arranged very much in the same manner as that of Cha.s.sey.[220] CAESAR'S CAMP, as it is called by the people of the neighborhood, forms a long triangle, the apex of which rests on the eastern extremity of the plateau. Excavations have yielded a number of Gallic-Roman objects, with some polished hatchets, some broken, others intact, with stone and bone weapons, resembling but for a few slight differences those we have described so often. Numerous fragments of pottery were also picked up, which pottery, hand-made and mixed with crushed sh.e.l.ls, seldom has either handles or any attempt at ornamentation. Weapons, implements, and pottery are all alike totally different from any Roman or Gallic work known. It is impossible to study the relics at Catenoy without coming to the conclusion that the camp was occupied at periods prior to Gallic and Roman times, and that there, as in many other districts, the Latin conquerors had succeeded an unknown vanquished race.

De Quatref.a.ges has accurately made out a series of works extending along the left bank of the Nive, as far as Itsa.s.sou, and of which the Pas-de-Roland marks the extreme limit. A merely superficial examination is enough to show that these defences existed only on the side to which access would otherwise have been easy, while the height overlooking the river on the other side, which is impregnable by nature, has been left untouched. Here too we find the name Caesar's Camp given to the relics, a fact of common occurrence all over France, where the great captain was long held in honor. Quatref.a.ges is, however, of opinion that the works are neither Roman, Gallic nor Celtic, and he even arrives by a process of elimination at the conclusion that they were erected by the Iberians, who preceded the Aryans, and have left so deep an impress on all the countries they successively occupied. We do not feel able to accept entirely this hypothesis; but no suggestion of the eminent professor must be overlooked by those who earnestly seek with unbia.s.sed minds to ascertain the truth.

Gregory of Tours relates that at the time of the invasion of the Vandals, the Gabali took refuge with their families in the CASTRUM GREDONENSE, and there, for two years, energetically resisted the invaders.[221] Greze, now a little market town of the department of Lozere, is the CASTRUM of which the old French chronicler speaks, and Dr. Prunieres there collected forty stone hatchets, differing in no material respect from others found in such numbers elsewhere, with flint knives and sc.r.a.pers, bone stilettos, and millstones, doubtless used for grinding grain, all of which are to the learned French professor proofs of the existence there of a Neolithic station before the historic period.

In the department of Alpes-Maritimes a series of defensive works crown the circle of mountains which rise from the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean. These intrenchments certainly date from a remote period, though we cannot a.s.sign them to any definite time, and the fact that they have been repaired at different epochs proves that they were successively occupied.[222] They consist princ.i.p.ally of circular or elliptical ENCEINTES surrounded by walls of stones without mortar, and they vary in diameter from some 39 to 328 feet. One of the largest is that on the Colline des Mulets, above Monte Carlo.

FIGURE 84

Prehistoric spoon and b.u.t.ton found in a lake station at Sutz (Switzerland).

Although the pile-dwellings of Switzerland and of the TERREMARES of Italy would appear to have been in themselves protection enough, their inhabitants did not neglect other means of defence, from which we may gather that they were engaged in constant and terrible struggles. The TERREMARES were generally surrounded by a talus or rampart of earth, with an external fosse which protected the approaches to the dwellings. The rampart of Castione (Parma), which dates from the Bronze age, was even strengthened inside with large timber caissons.[223] In Switzerland, some works recently undertaken to deflect the course of the Aar, on its exit from Lake Bienne, have led to the discovery of a village of the Stone age, with the bridges leading to it and the little forts intended to protect it.[224] As have the neighboring settlements, this station has yielded a great many arrows, hatchets, sc.r.a.pers, and harpoons. We give an ill.u.s.tration of a curious marrow spoon, and of a round object which seems to have been a b.u.t.ton (Fig. 84), as they mark the progress made.

Great Britain is intersected by lines of fortifications of unknown origin, but certainly of extreme antiquity. We may mention Dane's d.y.k.e, Wand.y.k.e, the Devil's d.y.k.e at Newmarket, and Offa's d.y.k.e, running from the Bristol Channel to the Dee, and dividing England from Wales. Ancient camps and intrenchments, Sir John Lubbock tells us, crown the greater number of the hills of England. General Pitt-Rivers explored several of these camps in the county of Suss.e.x. Many extend over considerable areas, and all contain numerous worked flints and other relics of prehistoric industry. These relics are met with in great numbers at the base of the intrenchments, so that we may justly conclude that they date from the same epoch.