CRANIAL AMULETS. 607 



cea:n"ial amulets. 



By De. J. BEETILLON. 



TILL the other day nothing was known that would indicate the 

 existence of a religion among the people of the Stone Age. But 

 a little over a year ago there were discovered clear traces of a ckUks, 

 the most ancient of which we have any idea. I propose here to nar- 

 rate how we gained our first knowledge of the gross and oftentimes 

 savage superstitions of our early ancestors. This important discovery 

 was made by Dr, Prunieres, of Marvejols. As he was cleaning some 

 skulls from the dolmens of Lozere, he found in the interior of one of 

 them a bone disk carefully polished on the edges, and evidently made 

 of a fragment of a cranium, perhaps of the parietal bone. The skull 

 in which this disk was found presented a great hole, through which it 

 might have passed ; still evidently it had not come from the part de- 

 stroyed, being considerably thicker than the other bones of the skull, 

 and, furthermore, differing from them in color. On examining this 

 cranium at the point where it was mutilated, the edges of the opening 

 were found to be carefully polished and beveled on the external sur- 

 fjice, and it was plain that the hole itself, like the disk of bone, had 

 been wrought by the hand of man. Was it also man who put the 

 bone disk inside of the skull? One mioht think at first that it was 

 the eifect of an accident similar to that by which the beads of a nock- 

 lace often drop into the skull ; but, when other pieces were discovered 

 similar to that described, it could not be doubted that it was the 

 hand of man which placed the disk of bone in the skull. What was 

 the intention ? It is impossible to say with certainty, but it is difiicult 

 not to believe that the practice was coupled with a religious idea. 



A number of skulls found by M. Prunieres presented an opening 

 more or less large, but contained no bone disk. These openings are 

 often the size of a silver dollar, of variable form, but usually circular. 

 That which has excited the greatest astonishment, however, is the fact 

 that these perforations had been made during life, for their beveled 

 edges had evidently commenced to cicatrize ; often, indeed, the loss of 

 substance was entirely restored. The savants to whom M. Prunieres 

 communicated his discovery then remembered that in many skulls 

 they too had observed similar holes, with the edges more or less cica- 

 trized. Up to that time they had supposed that they resulted from 

 strokes of a hatchet dealt by an athletic arm, just as now a sabre often 

 removes a portion of the skull. But what strength are we to imagine 

 the men of that time to have possessed in order to make such terrible 

 wounds with a simple stone hatchet ? Hence the explanation ofiered 

 was not very satisfactory. All doubts were set at rest by the invalu- 

 able discoveries of M. Prunieres, as interpreted by himself with rare 



