Jdxk 9, 1882.] 



• KNOWLEDGE • 



19 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN WESTERN 

 EUROPE. 



By Edwakd Clodd. 



SCANTY as are the bones of Palieolithic man, no 

 unprejudiced person can deny that the tools and 

 weapons of the Drift are products of human skill, low in 

 the scale as tliis may be ; for they have defined, purposeful 

 shapes, whicli were artificially produced, because they can 

 be thus formed only by the application of blows or of 

 pressure in a peculiar way, as modern experiments show. 

 Moreover, they indicate selection on the part of their 

 fashioners, since they cannot be made from every kind of 

 tlint. They are found, in striking correspondence of form, 

 wherever man is kno^\Ti to have wandered, or may be 

 presumed to have wandered, over the earth* — in the 

 allu^aals of the East, the laterite or brick earth of 

 Madras ; in the river-gravels of sacred and classic lands, 

 by the Sea of Galilee, and along the valley of the Tiber ; 

 in brief, in every explored part of the Old and New 

 Worlds " from Cliina to Peru. ' They witness to the wide 

 distribution of rude tribes of hunters in the lowest stage of 

 culture, of whose aboriginal home we can only speculate, of 

 whose ultimate fate nothing whatever is known. 



Into this Universe, and v;hii, not knowing, 

 Nor irhcnce, like water willy-nilly flowing; 

 And out of it, as wind along the waste, 

 I know not whither, willy-nilly blowing.f 



The description of rude Northern tribes given by Tacitus 

 may not unfitly — rather with added force — be applied to 

 them. "They are wonderfully savage and miserably poor. 

 They have no weapons, no horses, no homes ; they feed on 

 herbs, and are clad with the skins of beasts; the ground is 

 their bed, and their only hope of life is in their arrows, 

 which, for lack of iron, they sharpen with tips of bone. 

 The women live by hunting, just like the men, for they 

 accompany the men in their wanderings and seek their 

 share of the prey. And they have no other refuge for 

 their young children against wild beasts or storms than to 

 cover them up in a nest made of interlacing boughs. Such 

 are the homes to which the young men return, in whicli 

 the old men take their rest."! 



The implements of the ancient Stone Age are certainly 

 not more recent than the water-laid beds in which they 

 are found hitherto undisturbed, and the height of these, 

 ranging from .'iOft. to as much as 200 ft., in some places, 

 above the present river-levels, is proof of enormous anti- 

 quity. An appro.ximate estimate of the time required for 

 tiie deepening of a valley is furnished by the quantity of 

 sediment carried yearly by the river flowing through it to 

 the sea. The data at hand for this result are slender, but 

 Professor A. Geikie shows that the removal of one foot 

 of rock occupies in some cases a few centuries : in others 

 as many chiliads. For example, the Po appears to lower 

 the surface of the area drained by it at the rate of one foot 

 in 729 years, while the Mississippi takes G,000 years to 

 effect a like result. And although the larger volume and 

 flood of the Pleistocene rivers — betokened by the coarse 

 gravel, the large unrolled stones, and the mingled remains 

 of different species of animals which alternately occupied 

 the land, as the climate of Pleistocene times was now 

 genial, now arctic— scooped out the valleys at a quicker 

 rate than the rivers of to-day, the removal by the Somme, 



• Scandinavia must be excepted, the finds there being exclusively 

 Neolithic. 



+ Kubiiiyit of Omar Khayyilm, xxix. J Gcrmania, c. -W. 



for example, of masses of chalk and overlying Tertiary 

 (letiris (of which its valley entirely consists) to the depth 

 of 150 ft, through a channel many miles in length, 

 demands an Immense period. Subsequent to this, what 

 vast lapse of time is required to explain the gap between 

 the Drift and the early pre-historic period when the 

 polished stone-using peoples arrived, so that, as Dr. Evans 

 remarks : " we must, for the present at least, judge of the 

 antiquity of these deposits rather from the general effect 

 produced upon our minds by the vastness of the changes 

 which have taken place, both in the external configuration 

 of the country and its extent seaward, since the time of their 

 formation, than by any actual admeasurement of years or 

 of centuries.* 



But these implements of the river gravels do not tell the 

 whole story about Palieolithic man. Speaking broadly, he 

 falls into two divisions — Drift-man and Cave-man ; the 

 tools and weapons found in the limestone caverns of 

 Western Europe marking a distinct advance, perchance 

 due to another race, over those of the earlier period. For 

 while, as has been remarked, the gravel-beds yield only 

 oval-shaped flints and leaf-shaped flakes, the caves furnish 

 flint saws, lance heads, awls, barbed weapons, bone needles 

 (in one place a stone drill lying near them), imbedded with 

 charcoal and the debris of animals eaten, as the musk 

 sheep, bison, and others, especially the reindeer. From 

 the enormous numbers of this creature, which appears to 

 have formed the chief food of the rude hunters, the cave 

 deposits are often spoken of as belonging to the Reindeer 

 period, in contradistinction to the Drift or Mammoth 

 period. The precedence of decoration over dress notice- 

 able among savages, perhaps finds illustration in rude 

 strings of animals' teeth and shells ; while a soft red ochre 

 (o.xide of iron), which occurs among the relics, shows that 

 the Reindeer men painted their skins. But we are 

 anticipating. 



From the earliest times, " the clefts of the valleys, the 

 caves of the earth, and in rocks," have formed the natural 

 shelters of barbaric races. And, although the traces of 

 bone and other relic-yielding caverns of tertiary and early 

 quaternary times appear to have been swept away in the 

 momentous changes of land surface, the caverns of subse- 

 quent periods are rich in remains wliich enable us to con- 

 struct a more vivid outline of man in the ancient Stone 

 Age than do the scanty and rude relics of tlie Drift, 

 Implements of the Drift type occur among tlie oldest 

 layers in caverns, but the upper deposits supply the 

 evidence of advance to which reference has been 

 made. Following M. de Mortillet's' divisioi\s for a 

 moment, the Thenaisian and Acheulian epochs embrace the 

 Drift period ; the Moustcrian, Solutrian, and Magdalenian 

 epochs the Cave period. Not that these latter divisions 

 are to be taken as hard and fast, but as overlapping, 

 because they may, in fact, represent no great difference or 

 extended succession of time. And for the present purpose 

 it is better that in place of explanation of. or comment 

 upon, the method of selecting specific implements as types 

 of each period adopted by M. de Mortillet^ an account lie 

 given of the deposits and contents of one of our most 

 celebrated English caverns, premising that these will aftord 

 a fair idea of the bone-caves and rock-shelters of tlie con- 

 tinent, except where the latter have furnished certain 

 remarkable specimens of primitive art to be presently re- 

 ferred to. 



Before entering our cave, which shall be Kent's Hole, 

 near Tnr(|uay, let us briefly explain how the deposits in it, 

 and in like caverns found in limestone rock, have been 



' " Ancient Stone Iniplemonts," p. 621. 



