FOOD, AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF MAN. 595 



tioD. From it we should learn by what means and in what way the 

 men of prehistoric times came into possession of their food-stuffs ; and 

 this would be a long story full of deeds and full of suffering. Fortu- 

 nately, we possess other original documents besides the annals of his- 

 tory ; documents, too, that antedate all written history, and which are 

 no less trustworthy and unambiguous. The ground under our feet 

 has preserved them in its strata ; they rest in barrows and in caves, 

 and in the bottom of lakes and bogs, and these primitive documents 

 are not silent as to the food of extinct nations. 



In the present status of research, the, earliest authentic traces of 

 man on earth go no further back than the age of ice, so called, and the 

 accompanying or subsequent formation of the diluvium or drift. The 

 relics of man dating from an earlier epoch, the upper Miocene forma- 

 tion, that is, the middle of the Tertiary group, which are said to have 

 been found in France, are at least very questionable. But there have 

 been preserved for us in caverns remains dating from the Ice X^^^ 

 which tell us of the food used by man in those times. Man then in- 

 habited Central Europe in company with the reindeer, the cave-bear, 

 and the mammoth. He was exclusively a hunter and fisher, as is 

 shown by the bones of animals found in his cave-dwellings. The mio- 

 cene vegetation, which abounded in arboreal fruits, had disappeared 

 during the long period of the subsequent pliocene formations, the cli- 

 mate of Central Europe, meanwhile, having gradually become colder. 

 Nature supplied no fruits for the food of man. What food he got by 

 hunting and fishing was precarious, and there w^ere intervals of fam- 

 ine ; for fortune does not always smile on the hunter, and the beasts 

 of the forest are not always equally numerous. The food, too, was 

 uniform, and not altogether adapted for man, for the flesh of wild ani- 

 mals lacks fat. The man of those times had not enough of the heat- 

 producers in his food ; and that he felt this want, we learn from his 

 taste for the marrow of bones. All the long bones of animals that are 

 found in cave-dwellings are cracked open lengthwise, in order to get 

 out the marrow. Now, this insufficient, uniform food has its counter- 

 part, in the low grade of culture which then prevailed, as evidenced 

 by the mode of life, the weapons, and the tools. Man then lived iso- 

 lated, without social organization ; he dwelt in caverns, and his only 

 protection against the cold was the skins of animals and the fire on 

 the hearth. His tools were of stone, unpolished, unadorned; so rudely 

 fashioned, that only the eye of the connoisseur can recognize in them 

 man's handiwork. 



Let us now advance a step further, and glance at a time a few 

 thousand years nearer to our own, the period of the ancient pile-dwell- 

 ings. Man then built up huts, and even villages, on piles, in the 

 midst of lakes. These piles have been discovered, and between them, 

 on the bed of the lake, oftentimes overlaid with peat several feet in 

 depth, lie the monuments of those times — the waste of the house and 



