Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples Part 3

Nor were those already mentioned the only animals on which man made war. We shall speak presently of the contests with each other, which began amongst men in the very earliest days of humanity. Human bones, perforated by arrows and broken by stone hatchets, bear ineffaceable traces to this day of homicidal struggles.

In many places fresh-water and marine fish were utilized as food by man. In the numerous caves of the Vezere, in those of Madeleine, Eyzies, and Bruniquel, excavations have brought to light the vertebrae and other bones of fishes, amongst which predominate chiefly those of the jack, the carp, the bream, the drub, the trout, and the tench -- in a word, all the fish which still people our rivers and lakes. In the Lake Stations of Switzerland, fish of all kinds are no less abundant. At Gardeole, amongst the bones of mammals have been found the sh.e.l.ls of mollusca, and remains of the turtle. and of goldfish. Fish was not, however, caught by all these primitive people, not even by all those who lived by the sea. In researches carefully carried on for years in the Maritime-Alps, M. Riviere found neither fis.h.i.+ng-tackle nor fish-lines.

Whilst the cave-men of the south of France seem not to have utilized any but fresh-water fish, the Scandinavians, at a date probably less remote however, did not hesitate to brave the ocean. The kitchen-middings contain numerous remains of fish, amongst which those of the mackerel, the dab, and the herring are the most numerous. There, too, we meet with relics of the cod, which never approaches the coast, and must always be sought by the fisherman in the open sea.

Although we are in a position to a.s.sert that men were able to catch fish during every prehistoric period, if not in every locality, we can speak less positively of their mode of doing so. The earliest fis.h.i.+ng-tackle was doubtless of the most primitive description: the bone of some animal, a fragment of hard wood, or even a fish-bone pointed at each end and pierced with a hole, served their purpose (Fig. 10). The Exhibition of Fis.h.i.+ng-Tackle held at Berlin in 1880 contained several such implements, some of wood, others of bone. Others have also been found in the Madeleine Cave, and in different stations of the ancient inhabitants of Switzerland. It is interesting to note their resemblance to those still in use amongst the Esquimaux.

FIGURE 10

Fragments of arrows made of reindeer horn from the Martinet Cave (Lot-et-Garonne). -- 2. Point of spear or harpoon in stag-horn (one third natural size). -- 3. and 4. Bone weapons from Denmark. -- 5. Harpoon of stag-horn from St. Aubin. -- 6. Bone fish-hook; pointed at each end, from w.a.n.gen.

Prehistoric mail also turned to account the teeth of animals. We may quote in this connection the molars of a bear from which the enamel and the crown have been removed, and the thickness of which has been lessened by rubbing (Fig. 11). The small flints picked up in great numbers in the department of the Gironde also date from a remote antiquity; they are sixteen millimetres long by four wide, and though we cannot a.s.sert it as a fact, they are supposed to have been used for catching fish.

FIGURE 11

Bears' teeth converted into fish-hooks.

FIGURE 12

Fish-hook made out of a boar's tusk.

The Museum of Lund possesses two flint fish-books of a curved shape, one of them, which is four centimetres long by nearly three wide, was found by the seash.o.r.e; the other and smaller one came front the sh.o.r.es of Lake Kranke.[68] Fish-hooks made of bone, which is more easily worked than flint, very soon replaced those in that material. They are numerous in the Lake Stations of w.a.n.gen, Mooseedorf, and St. Aubin. Some are cut out of the horns of oxen, others of stags'

antlers; while others again are made of boars' tusks (Fig. 12), but all alike greatly resemble modern forms. The peat-bogs of Scania have yielded a bone fish-hook seven centimetres long, which is considered very ancient, and the Museum of Stettin possesses one, also very old, found in a gnarly deposit of Pomerania. We must not forget to mention, although it probably belongs to a much more recent period, a fish-hook in reindeer horn, now in the Christiania Museum. It was found in a tomb in the island of Kjelnoe, not far from the Russian frontier. Numerous skeletons, wrapped up in swathings of birch-bark, repose in this tomb. All around lay fragments of pottery, lance- and arrow-heads,[69] and combs of reindeer horn, the date of which it is impossible to fix exactly.

In America, stone fish-hooks are rare. The most ancient are of bone, and resemble those now in use. They have been picked up in Dakota, and in the cinderheaps of Madisonville (Ohio), in Indiana, in Arkansas, on the sh.o.r.es of Lake Erie, and in a kitchen-midding of Long Island. The greater number of them are polished, and some of them have near the top a hole by which they could be fastened to a line or cord. The fish-hooks of California are remarkable for their rounded forms and sharply curved points; the top was covered with a thick layer of asphalt to which the line was probably fastened. They are numerous in all the islands of the Pacific coast. In that of Santa Cruz Schumacker excavated a tomb which must have been that of a fish-hook manufacturer, for care had been taken to place near the deceased, not only the implements of his craft, but also a number of fish-hooks in various stages of advancement. The Californians used the sh.e.l.ls of the MYTILUS CALIFORNICUS and HALIOTIS to make fish-hooks, and these were even more curved than those made of bone. The shape seems but little suited for fis.h.i.+ng, but even in our own day the natives of the Samoa Islands use similar tackle with great success. The Indians of the northwest coast make fish-hooks of epicea wood, and those of Arizona utilize for the same purpose the long spikes of the cactus. It is very probable that European as well as American races knew how to use wood in the same manner. During the lapse of centuries, however, these fragile objects have been reduced to dust, and we are unable to make any further conjectures on the subject.

The use of bronze, the first metal to be generally employed, does not seem to have introduced any great modifications in fis.h.i.+ng-tackle. Bronze fish-hooks are, however, thinner and lighter than those in other materials, and resemble those in use amongst fishermen at the present day. A certain number have been found in the Lake Stations of Switzerland, in lakes Peschiera and Bourget, as well as in Scotland, Ireland, and the island of Funen off the coast of Denmark. We must not omit to mention the important foundry of Larnaud, or the CACHE of Saint-Pierre-en-Chatre, both so rich in bronze objects. In America, where the copper mines of Lake Superior were worked at a remote antiquity, a few rare copper fish-hooks have been found, the greater number in the Ancon necropolis.[70] Gold fish. hooks are comparatively more numerous, and have been discovered in New Granada and the Cauca State.[71] One of these was found some forty-nine feet below the surface of the ground, and as there is no trace of disturbance, we cannot a.s.sign to it a recent origin. The gold fish-hooks are about four inches long, and look like big pins with the lower end bent back upon the upper.

Other fis.h.i.+ng implements were also used by out- prehistoric ancestors. At Laugerie-Ba.s.se a rough drawing shows us a man striking with a harpoon a fish that is trying to escape. These harpoons were generally made of reindeer horn (Figs. 10 and 13). Some had but one barb, others several. One of the largest was found in the Madeleine Cave; it is eight inches long, and has three barbs on one side and five on the other. Most of these weapons have a notch in the handle, with the help of which they could be firmly fastened to a spear or lance. Different fas.h.i.+ons prevailed in different localities, and sinews, leather thongs, roughly plaited cords, creepers, and resinous substances were often pressed into the service.

FIGURE 13

A, a large barbed arrow from one side of the Plantade shelter (Tarn-et-Garonne). B, lower part of a barbed harpoon from the Plantade deposit.

Many harpoons have been found in the caves of the south of France; others come from Belgium, from Keyserloch in Germany, Kent's Hole in England, from Conches, Wauwyl, and Concise in Switzerland. Excavations in Victoria Cave, near Settle (Yorks.h.i.+re), yielded amongst other interesting objects a bone harpoon cut to a point and with two barbs on either side. On the banks of the Uswiata, a little Polish river flowing into the Dnieper, two harpoons made out of the horns of some bovine animal were found, both in perfect preservation, and with several barbs.[72] Count Ouvaroff, in an excellent work published a little before his death, mentions a bone spear from the sh.o.r.es of the Oka, and Madsen and Montelius speak of Scandinavian harpoons. These weapons must have been especially useful in the North during the severe frosts of winter. The fisherman made a hole in the ice and struck the fish with his harpoon when the poor creatures came up to the surface to breathe.

From the most remote times the Americans knew how to make and use harpoons. As many as twenty. eight different kinds are known.[73] In some the barbs are bilateral, but most of them have them on one side only. Some, however, are made of stag or elk horn, and one harpoon from Maine is made of whalebone. A harpoon-point found near Detroit (Michigan) is nearly a foot long by one inch thick. Excavations in a rock shelter in Alaska yielded a harpoon which lay side by side with some of the most ancient Quaternary mammals of America. A good many copper harpoon-heads are also mentioned; one of the largest from Wisconsin is ten inches long. Others have been found in the island of Santa Barbara (California) and in Tierra del Fuego, where the natives of the present day still use similar ones. These harpoons with barbs are by no means simple weapons, the idea of which would naturally occur to the human mind, so that it is really extremely strange to find weapons so entirely similar in regions so different and so widely separated from one another. This constant similitude in the working of the genius of man is, as We shall never tire of repeating, one of the most striking facts revealed by prehistoric researches.

Herodotus tells that the Poeni (Carthaginians) plunged baskets into the water and drew them up full of fish. It is probable that the Lake Dwellers of Helvetia employed a similar process, but these ancient Swiss were already more advanced than that. They knew how to cultivate hemp, to spin it, and to make nets of it; the remains of some of these nets have often of late years been taken from the beds of the lakes.

It is almost impossible to cla.s.s with any certainty the numerous Lake Stations of Switzerland. Some few certainly date from the Stone age, others from the transition period, between it and that of the early use of metals, or even from the Bronze age. As therefore they have been occupied at different times by different people, some of them having even been still in use in the time of the Romans, it is most difficult to fix with any precision the date to which belong the various objects mixed together beneath the deep waters of the lakes. We can only say that the nets differ very much in the size of the meshes, and the thickness of the rope used. Those found at Robenhausen are very like those in use in France at the present day. There has, in fact, been no advance in the art of making fis.h.i.+ng-tackle since the remote days of the Lake Dwellers.

We are ignorant of the mode of manufacture of prehistoric nets. Did the Lake Dwellers, as some archaeologists are disposed to think, use a loom? Did they use shuttles and rollers such as are employed by the Esquimaux and Californians of the present day? It is impossible to say, but it is supposed that the bears' teeth sharpened to a point, found in some stations, were used to tighten the meshes. These meshes were generally square, and each one was finished of with a knot of the same size at each intersection.

The lead weights so indispensable to fishermen of the present day for sinking the nets, were represented in prehistoric times by stones. These stones, which are drilled or notched, are found in all the Lake Stations. The fragments of pottery pierced with a hole found at Schussenried, a Lake Station of the Stone age on the Feder-See (Wurtemburg), were probably used for the same purpose. In some of the Swiss Lake Stations have also been found pieces of wood and cork, pierced with one or more holes, which had certainly served as floats.

Numerous stone implements of the most primitive forms, often of rock not native to the country, have been found in some of the islands of Greece, as well as in Corsica, Sardinia, Elba, and Sicily. These discoveries bear witness to the presence of man in these islands at a very remote antiquity, though no other traces of the existence of prehistoric human beings have as yet been found there. These men can only have reached the islands by way of the sea. Boats were the only means of communication between the Lake Dwellers of Switzerland and the mainland, and, as we have seen, the ancient Scandinavians hunted fish on the deep ocean. We must therefore admit that attempts at navigation were made in the very earliest days of humanity. Alan, impelled by necessity, or perhaps only by curiosity, was not afraid to launch his bark, first upon the rivers, and later upon the more formidable waves of the sea

Illi robur et aes triplex Circa pectus erat, qui fragilem truci Commisit pelago ratem Primus.[74]

The Latin poet is right, and we cannot but admire those who were the first to brave the terrors of the deep and the horrors of the tempest; for they were gifted alike with the intelligence which conceives, the courage that dares, and the strength that achieves.

Trees torn up by the roots by the force of the waters, and floating on the surface of those waters, naturally attracted the attention of primeval man, and the first boats were doubtless the trunks of such trees roughly squared and then hollowed out with the help of fire. Later experience led to the addition of a prow which would more easily cleave the water, and a stern which would serve as a pivot. These canoes, if such a name may be already given to them, were at first guided by branches stripped of their leaves, or with long poles. Then oars or paddles were introduced, which are better for beating the water, and in later barks traces have been made out of what is supposed to have been a mast, indicating the use of a sail. The art of navigation may now be said to have been inaugurated. In different parts of Europe have been found boats which certainly belong to very remote times, though their exact date cannot be fixed. Their construction greatly resembles that of the pirogues of the Polynesians, or the kayaks of the Greenlanders. One of the most ancient, now in the Berlin Provincial Museum, was taken from a peat-bog of Brandenburg.[75]

It is 27 feet long and scarcely 16 inches wide.

Sir W. Wilde describes several boats from the marshes and peat-bogs of Ireland,[76] many of which have handles cut in the wood at the ends, by the help of which they could easily be dragged along overland. Sir W. Wilde adds that the Irish also used CURRAGHS, or CORACLES, which were mere wicker frames covered with the skins of oxen. These frail barks introduce us to a new mode of navigation; they are met with not only in tire different countries of Europe, but also in America, and were in use there in pre-Columbian times. Even more interesting examples have been found in Scotland.[77] Towards the close of last century a pirogue was taken from the ancient bed of the Clyde at Glasgow. Since then have been discovered, at depths varying from six to twelve feet, more than twenty similar boats. The deposits in which they lay had formerly been beneath the sea, but are now some twenty feet above the level of the ocean. Great changes have therefore taken place since these barks were launched upon the waves.[78] Their mode of construction is an excellent indication of the date to which they belong. Some which are hollowed out of the trunks of oaks by the help of fire, or with a blunt tool, are supposed by Lyell to date from the Stone age. Others have clean-cut notches, evidently made with metal implements. Some are made of planks joined together with wooden pegs, and one canoe found in County Galway even contained copper nails. Most of the boats from the bed of the Clyde seem to have foundered in still waters. Some, however, were discovered in a vertical position, others had the keel uppermost, and these latter had evidently sunk in a storm. In one of these boats was a diorite hatchet of the kind characteristic of Neolithic times; another, the wood of which was perfectly black, had become as hard as marble, and in it was a cork plug. Then, as now, the oak which yields cork was foreign to the cold climate of Scotland.

We will quote but one of the discoveries made in England. In 1881 a canoe, hollowed out of the trunk of a tree, was found at Bovey-Tracey in Devons.h.i.+re. It lay in a deposit of brick-earth more than twenty-nine feet below the highest level reached by the waters of the Bovey.[79] It was more than thirty-five inches wide, and its length could not be exactly determined, the workmen having broken it in getting it out. An eminent archaeologist is of opinion that this boat dates from the Glacial epoch, perhaps even from a more remote time. If this hypothesis, the responsibility of which we leave to him, be correct, this is the most ancient witness in existence of prehistoric navigation. We must also mention a boat found near Brigg (Lincolns.h.i.+re), a few feet from a little river that flows into the Humber. It is about forty-five feet long by three and a half feet wide, and is some three feet high. The prow is fluted. There are no traces of a mast, though the size of the boat must have made it difficult to manage with oars alone.

One of the pirogues preserved at the Copenhagen Museum is made of one half of the trunk of a tree, some six feet long, hollowed into the shape of a trough, and cut straight at both ends.[80] It is curious to compare this clumsy structure with a boat recently discovered beneath a tumulus at Gogstadten in Norway (Fig. 14), of which, though it dates from historic times, we give a drawing, as it is a good ill.u.s.tration of the progress made. The dead Viking had been laid in his boat, as the most glorious of tombs; with its prow pointing seawards, for would not the first thoughts of the chief when he awoke in another life be of the sea which had witnessed his triumphs? The sides of the boat, which was more than sixty-six feet long and fifteen across the widest part, were painted, and around it was ranged a series of s.h.i.+elds lapping over one another like the scales of a fish, and not unlike the designs seen in the celebrated Bayeux tapestry. A block of oak intended to receive the mast was placed in the centre of the boat, and near the skeleton were oars some fifteen feet long and similar in form to those now in use.

FIGURE 14

Ancient Scandinavian boat found beneath a tumulus at Gogstadten.

Inlaying the foundations of the bridge of Les Invalides, Paris, a boat was taken out of the mud which had lain there for many centuries. Like most of those already mentioned, it had been made out of a single trunk roughly squared. Everywhere, we must repeat once again, man's original ideas were the same; everywhere the tree floating on the top of the water excited his curiosity, and became the starting-point for one of his most important discoveries. Traces of similar attempts at navigation are met with in other parts of France; a canoe was found in the Loire near Saint Mars, and the Dijon Museum possesses another from the same river, the latter some sixteen feet long, and traces have been made out of what are supposed to have been seats, but may have been mere contrivances for strengthening the boat. A canoe taken last year from the bed of the Cher is of the shape of a trough closed at the end by pieces of wood fixed by means of vertical grooves. The prow had been shaped in the first instance in the trunk itself, and it was probably owing to an accident, a collision perhaps, that it had had to be mended in this way (Fig. 15).

FIGURE 15

Ancient boat discovered in the bed of the Cher.

The Lake Dwellers of Switzerland owned boats from the time of their first settlement in their water homes. One of them found at Robenhausen is more than ten feet long, and is very shallow, varying from six to eight inches. Like most of those already mentioned, it was hollowed out of the trunk of a tree, bulging out towards the centre, and rounded at the ends. So far none but stone tools have been found at the station of Robenhausen, so that we must presume that it was with such tools that the boat was made. The lakes of Bienne and. Geneva, and the stations of Morges and Estavayer have also yielded boats which are doubtless less ancient than those of which I have just spoken. In nearly all of them the prow is curiously pointed. One of them from the Lake of Neuchatel, large enough to bold twelve people, has a beak at the stern and a rounded prow; but there is no sign of any contrivance for keeping the oars in place.

Lastly, a boat bas been found in Switzerland some 3,900 feet above the valley of the Rhine, but no one can say how it came to be at such a height.

FIGURE 16

A lake pirogue found in the Lake of Neuchatel. 1. As seen from the outside. 2 and 3. Longitudinal and transverse sections.

These canoes, whatever their shape or size, can only have been worked by means of oars, yet oars have seldom been found. The Geneva Museum, however, has one which came from the muddy bed of an Italian lake, and others are preserved in the Royal Museum of Dublin, which have every sign of great antiquity. In de fault of the actual oars, we have other proofs of their use. Gross[81] mentions a boat (Fig. 16) in which holes had been made in the upper parts of the sides to hold the oars. In 1882 a pirogue was taken out of the bed of the Rhone at Cordon (Ain), which had been half buried in the mud of the river. The wood was black and the upper portions were charred, but the middle part was still intact and very hard. The holes, pierced in the sides at regular intervals, may have served to keep the oars in place. The position of the rowers at the bottom of the boat was very unsatisfactory. It was not, however, until later that we find seats so placed as to enable the rowers to put out all their strength. At a recent meeting of the Anthropological Society (July 21, 1887) M. Letourneau observed that the rudder came into use very slowly. It was not known to the Egyptians or to the Phoenicians, nor, which is still more strange, to the Greeks and Romans. Their vessels, whatever their size, were guided by two large oars (GUBERNACULUM) placed in the stern. The Chinese appear to have been the only people who were acquainted with the use of the rudder from time immemorial. It is probable that from them it pa.s.sed to the Arabs and even perhaps to the people of Europe.

A discovery made near Abbeville is the most ancient example we have of the use of the mast. Some works being executed at the fortifications of the town, brought to light a boat which must have been some twenty-one feet long. Two projections form part of the planking, leaving between them a rectangular s.p.a.ce in which the mast was probably fixed.[82]