Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples Part 4

Professor Gastaldi speaks of a wooden anchor taken from a peat-bog near Arona, beneath which was a pile dwelling. He dates it from the tinge when the use of bronze was already beginning to spread in the north of Italy. A stone of peculiar shape found at Niddau is, they say, an ANKERSTEIN (anchor stone). This name is also given by Friedel to a good-sized round lump of sandstone with a deep groove near the middle. Lastly, Kerviler, in crossing a basin of the Bay of Penhouet, near Saint-Nazaire, found several stones which had evidently been used to keep boats at anchor, and with the aid of which we can get an idea of the methods employed by ancient navigators (Fig. 17).

FIGURE 17

Stones used as anchors, found in the Bay of Penhouet. 1, 2, 3, stones weighing about 160 pounds each. 4 and 5, lighter stones, probably used for canoes.

Such are the only details we have on the important subject of prehistoric anchors, but we may add that ancient fishermen probably ventured but a short distance from the land, and would not need anchors, as they could easily carry their light boats on sh.o.r.e.

We leave now pa.s.sed in review the conditions of the life of our remote ancestors, noting the animals that were their contemporaries, and the fish that peopled the watercourses near which they lived. We have studied the earliest efforts at navigation, made in the pursuit of fish, and we must now go back to examine the weapons, tools, and ornaments of these ancient peoples, and trace in those objects the dawn of art. This will be the aim of our next chapter.

CHAPTER III

Weapons, Tools, Pottery; Origin of the Use of Fire, Clothing, Ornaments; Early Artistic Efforts.

The Vedas show us Indra, armed with a wooden club, seizing a stone with which to pierce Vritra, the genius of evil.[83] Does not this call up a picture of the earliest days of man upon the earth? His first weapon was doubtless a knotty branch torn from a tree as be hurried past, or a stone picked up from amongst those lying at his feet. These were, however, but feeble means with which to contend with formidable feline and pachydermatous enemies. Man bad not their great physical strength; he was not so fleet a runner as many of them; his nails and teeth were useless to him, either for attack or defence; his smooth skin was not enough protection even from the rigor of the climate. Such inequality must very quickly have led to the defeat of man, had not G.o.d given to him two marvellous instruments: the brain which conceives, and the hand which executes. To brute force man opposed intelligence, a glorious struggle in which he was sure to come off victorious, for in the words of Victor Hugo, "Ceci devait tuer cela." The huge animals of Quaternary times have disappeared for ever, whilst plan has survived, victor over Nature herself. Even before his birth, an immutable decree had ordained that nothing on the earth should check his development.

Man alone amongst the countless creatures around him knew anything of the past, and he alone was able to predict the future. Even apes, however great the intelligence that may be attributed to them, have remained very much what they were from the first. In vain has one generation succeeded another; they still obey the dictates of their brutal instincts, as their ancestors did before them; and if apes continue to propagate their species thousands of years hence they will remain what we see them to be now. Dogs, too, will remain dogs, elephants will continue to be elephants; beavers will make their dams exactly like those of the present day, wasps will never learn to make honey as bees do, and bees will never be able, like ants, to bring up plant-lice to be their servants, or to enslave other families. Their instincts are incapable of progress, and in their earliest efforts they reach the limit a.s.signed to them by the Eternal Wisdom. To man alone has it been given to understand what has been done by his predecessors, to walk more firmly in the path along which they groped, to p.r.o.nounce clearly the words they stammered. Without a doubt we descend from the men who lived in the midst of primeval forests, or amongst stagnant marshes, dwelling in caves, for the possession of which they often bad to fight with the wild beasts around them. These men, however, knew that one result achieved would lead to another, if similar means were used; they saw that a pointed stone would inflict a deeper wound than a blunt one on the animal they hunted, and therefore they learnt to sharpen stones artificially; the skins of beasts, flung over their shoulders, protected them from cold, and they learned to make garments; seeds sprouted around them, and they learned to plant them; they noticed the effect of heat upon metals, and tried to mix them; wild animals wandered around them, and they learned to reduce them to slavery. Every bit of knowledge won, and every progress made, became the starting-point for fresh acquisitions, fresh advances, which thenceforth remained forever the common heritage of the human race.

It was thus that experience early taught our remote ancestors that rock chips more easily under the blows of a hammer when fresh from the quarry; and everywhere men learnt to choose the stone best suited to their purpose. For hatchets, wedges, and hammers, they used jade and kindred substances, such as fibrolite, diorite, acrd basalt, which were at the same time extremely durable, and very impervious to blows. For spear- and arrow-heads, knives, saws, and all instruments requiring sharp points and cutting edges, they employed quartz, jaspar, agate, and obsidian, according to the situation of the worker; all these materials, though extremely hard, being easily split into thin sharp flakes. The blocks of stone were very methodically cut up; they were, in fact, to use a very appropriate expression of M. Dupont's, scaled (ECAILLES). We give drawings of a few of these implements (Figs. 18, 19, and 20), which ill.u.s.trate the earliest efforts of lean, efforts which may be looked upon as the starting-point of all those industries which in the course of centuries have developed results which it is impossible to contemplate without astonishment.

FIGURE 18

Sc.r.a.per from the Delaware Valley.

FIGURE 19

Implement from the Delaware Valley.

The host ancient tools which have come down to us were clumsy and heavy, cut on both sides and pointed (Fig. 20). They may vary in material, in size, and in finish, but they can always be easily recognized.[84] Were they man's only weapons? We hesitate to believe it, and the careful researches of M. d'Acy add to our incredulity.[85]

He tells us that at Saint-Acheul, which was the very cradle of these strange discoveries, the almond shape is found mixed with the pointed amongst the Moustier flints, so that what is true in one place is not in another, and any general conclusion would certainly be premature.

FIGURE 20

Worked flints from the Lafaye and Plantade shelters (Tarn-et-Garonne).

It would take us a long time to enumerate the countries where tools of the Ch.e.l.leen[86] type have been found. They are met with in the valleys of the rivers of France, now imbedded in the flinty alluvium, now strewn upon the surface of the soil. Though rare in Germany, they are found in abundance in the southeast of England, and it is to this period that must be a.s.signed the discoveries at Hoxne, and in the basins of the Thames, the Ouse, and the Avon. Similar discoveries have been frequent in Italy, Spain, Algeria, and Hindostan. Dr. Abbott speaks of the finding of such implements in the glacial alluvium of the Delaware (Figs. 18 and 19), Miss Babitt in the alluvial deposits of the Mississippi, Mr. Haynes in New Hamps.h.i.+re, Mr. Holmes in Colombia, and other explorers in the basin of the Bridget and at Guanajuato in Mexico. Everywhere these implements are identical in shape and in mode of construction, and very often they are a.s.sociated with the bones of animals of extinct species.

Sometimes these Ch.e.l.leen tools (the French call them COUPS DE POING) have retained at the base a projection to enable the user to grasp them better; these certainly never had handles, but it will not do to draw any general conclusions froth that fact; and an examination of the collection of M. d'Acy, the most complete we have of relics of the Ch.e.l.leen period, proves on the contrary that certain tools could not have been used unless they had been fixed into handles.

In the following epoch, to which has been given the name of Mousterien, from the Moustier Cave (Dordogne), we already meet with more varied forms, including sc.r.a.pers, saws, knife-blades, and spear- or arrow-heads, with the special characteristic of being cut on one side only. These implements are found not only in the alluvium as are the Ch.e.l.leen COUPS DE POING, but also in the cave or rock-shelter deposits. Amongst the mammalian remains with which they are a.s.sociated are those of the mammoth, the RHINOCEROS TICHORHINUS, the elk, the horse, the aurochs, the cave-lion, the cave-hyena, and the cave-bear, remarkable for the constancy of their characteristics. The ELEPHAS ANTIQUUS and the RHINOCEROS MERCKII that belonged to the preceding period have now completely pa.s.sed away, and the reindeer, now appearing for the first time, are still far from numerous.

In the Solutreen period, so named after the celebrated Lake Station of Solutre, we find stalked arrow-heads with lateral notches,[87]

flint-heads of the form of laurel leaves, which are remarkable for their regularity of shape and delicacy of finish; as compared with those of previous periods, the forms are much more delicate and elegant. Many of the caves of the south of France belong to this period. It is difficult to mention them all, and even more difficult to make out a complete list of contemporary mammalia; the deposits generally actually touch those of another period, and the separation of the objects in them has not always been made with all the care that could be wished. At Solutre, remains of the horse predominate; whilst in other places those of the reindeer are met with in considerable quant.i.ties, and with them are found the bones of the cave-bear, the wild cat (a creature considerably larger than the tigers of the present day), and of the mammoth, which lived on in Europe many centuries.

Lastly to the Madeleine period, so named after the Madeleine Cave (Dordogne), and considered one of the most important of the cave epochs, belong tools and weapons of all manner of shapes and materials, including bone, born, and reindeer antlers; from this time also date barbed arrows and harpoons, batons of office, telling of social organization; the engravings and carvings on which bear witness to the development of artistic feeling. On the other hand, the flint arrow-heads and knife-blades are not so finely cut; we see that man had learned to use other materials than stone. The reindeer is the most characteristic animal form of the Madeleine period.

To the times we have just pa.s.sed in review succeeded others of a very different kind, to which has been given the general naive of Neolithic. The fauna, probably lender the influence of climatic and orographic changes, underwent a complete transformation; the mammoth, the cave-bear, the megaceros, and the large felidae died out, the hippopotamus was no longer seen, except in the heart of Africa; the reindeer and other mammals that love to frequent the regions of perpetual snow, retired to the extreme north; and in their place appeared our earliest domestic animals, the ox, the sheep, the goat, and the dog. Man, who witnessed these changes, continued to progress; he abandoned his nomad for a sedentary life; he ceased to be a bunter, and became an agriculturist and a shepherd. Everywhere we meet with traces of new customs, new ideas, and a new mode of life. This progress is especially seen in the industrial arts. Metals it is true are still unknown, but side by side with tools, which are merely chipped or roughly cut, we find for the first time hatchets, celts, small knife-blades, and arrow-heads admirably polished by the long-continued rubbing of one stone on another. Polishers, so much worn as to bear witness to long service, are numerous in all collections, and rocks and erratic blocks retain incisions which must have been used for the same purpose.[88]

It is impossible to enumerate the number of polished hatchets which have been found; their number is simply incalculable. Of all of them, however, those of Scandinavia are the most remarkable for delicacy of workmans.h.i.+p. With the fine hatchets of Brittany, may be compared the blades found at Volgu, and preserved in the Museum of Copenhagen, and those in pink, gray, and brown flint, from the Sordes Cave in the south of France; but we cannot fix the date of the production of any of them. One of the great difficulties of prehistoric research, a difficulty not to be got over in the present state of our knowledge, is to distinguish with any certainty the periods into which an attempt has been made to divide the life-story of man from his first appearance upon earth.

Was there any abrupt transition from one period to another? Must we accept the theory of a long break caused by geological phenomena, and the temporary depopulation which was one of the consequences of these phenomena? Did the new era of civilization date from the arrival of foreign races, stronger and better fitted than those they succeeded for the struggle for existence? Or are these changes merely the result of the natural progress which is one of the laws of our being? These questions cannot now be solved, and if the industries which are at the present moment the object of our researches, bear witness to the employment of a new process, that of polis.h.i.+ng, we are bound to add that everywhere Paleolithic forms are still persistent. Flints, merely chipped, are clumsy tools, but there is no break in their series till we come to the splendid specimens from Scandinavia or from Mexico. Of the seven types of the Solutreen period, six are met with in the time now under consideration.[89] Five types of Solutreen javelins have also been found in the Durfort Cave, and beneath the dolmens of Aveyron and of Lozere. Neolithic weapons, such as those found in the Moustier Cave, are not so numerous, but the type adopted there is not such a fine one nor so carefully finished, which accounts for its having been more rarely copied. If we examine the knives, awls, sc.r.a.pers, and saws, we come to the same conclusion, although comparison is not so easy. "A knife is always a knife, an awl is always an awl,"

remarks M. Cartailhac; "they were made at every period, and their resemblance to each other proves nothing with any certainty."

Rounded stones of granite or sandstone seem however to have been weapons peculiar to the Neolithic period. Dr. Pommerol recently spoke at the Anthropological Society of Paris, of two such rounded stones picked up in the Puy-de-Dome. Similar stones have been discovered at Viry-Noureuil, and M. Ma.s.senat has one in his collection from Chez-Pourre. Are not these rounded stones of a similar character to the BOLAS flung by the ancient Gauls, and still in use amongst the inhabitants of the pampas of South America?

As we have already remarked, plan from the earliest times must often have held in his hands the stones which served him as weapons or as tools. The marks of hammering on the smooth surfaces, the rounded projections and the grooves worked in these stones, were evidently made to prevent the hand or the thumb from slipping. Soon, however, reflection led man to understand the increase of force he would gain by the addition to the stone of a handle of wood or horn, stag or reindeer antler. This addition of a handle was simple enough: the workman merely bound it to the hatchet with fibrous roots, leather thongs, or ligaments taken from the gut of the animals slain in the chase (Fig. 21). At first sight we are astonished at the results obtained with such wretched materials, but it is impossible to dispute them, for we have seen the same thing done in our own day.

FIGURE 21

1. Stone javelin-head with handle. 2. Stone hatchet with handle.

Other hatchets, chiefly those of a small size, were fixed into sheaths made of stag-horn, and two chief types of them have actually been made out.[90] The sheaths of the first type are short and end in quadrangular beads. They are found most frequently in Switzerland, in the basins of the Rhone and of the Saone, and throughout the south of France. Those of the second type are pierced with a hole large enough to pa.s.s the handle through. These are found in the northwest of France, in Belgium, and in England.

Flint arrows of triangular or oval form, notched or stalked, were everywhere used for a considerable length of time. They are found in the numerous caves of France, beneath the ANTAS of Portugal, in the tombs of Mykenae, as well as among the Ainos of j.a.pan and the Patagonians of South America. Their use necessarily involves that of a bow, yet we do not know of a single weapon such as that, or of one that could take its place, dating from Paleolithic times. Probably the rapid decomposition of the wood of which bows were made has led to their disappearance. De Mortillet[91] mentions a bow found in a pile-dwelling in a bog near Robenhausen, which he ascribes to the Neolithic period. Another is known which was found at Lutz, also in Switzerland. To all appearance the most ancient bows of historic times greatly resemble these two prehistoric examples.

Though flint was the material par excellence of Quaternary times for weapons and tools, it could not long suffice for the ever-growing needs of man. Our museums contain a complete series of bone or stag-horn implements such as darts, arrow-heads, barbed arrows, harpoons, fibulae, and finely cut needles often pierced with eyes (Fig. 22). The invention of barbs is worthy of special notice; the series of points made the blow much more dangerous, as the projectile remained in the flesh of a wounded animal which was not able to get it out. But this was not the only object of the barbs. Arranged symmetrically on either side of the arrow they kept it afloat in the air like the wings of a bird, which may perhaps have suggested their use and increased the effect and precision of the shot.

FIGURE 22

1. Fine needles.

2. Coa.r.s.e needles.

3. Amulet.

4 and 6. Ornaments.

5. Cut flint.

7. Fragment of a harpoon.

8. Fragments of a reindeer antler with signs or drawings.

9. Whistle.

10. One end of a bow (?).

11. Arrow-head. (From the Vache, Ma.s.sat, and Lourdes caves.)

The Marsoulas Cave has yielded one bevelled arrow shaft, made of reindeer antler, with a deep groove on the surface. A similar arrow-head was found in the Pacard Cave, and in other places arrows have been found with one or more grooves on the surface. Were these grooves or drills intended to hold poison, and was man already acquainted with this melancholy Diode of destruction? We know that the use of poison was known at the most remote historic antiquity.[92]

The Greeks and Scythians used the venom of the viper, and other peoples employed vegetable poisons. There is nothing to prevent our believing that similar methods were in use in prehistoric times.

FIGURE 23