Sept. 22, 1882.] 



KNOWLEDGE 



273 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN WESTERN 

 EUROPE. 



By Edward Clodd. 

 COXCLUSIOX. 



THE general character of the deposits in Kent's Hole 

 resembles so closely that of the accumulations in 

 bone caverns of the Continent, that reference to these 

 would be needless but for the presence in them of certain 

 relics of palteolithic art which are rare in English caves 

 and, so far as is known, altogether absent from Xeolitliic 

 deposits, as the "kitchen-middens " of the Baltic shores and 

 the lake-iillages of Switzerland. The exploration of rock- 

 shelters in the Dordogne by Lartet and Christy brought to 

 light a series of scratched or etched fragments of bone and 

 stone remarkable for their graphic sketches of animals of 

 the reindeer period, and for their witness to the advance 

 which Cave-man had attained over his predecessor of the 

 Drift That such work as this was done, implies not only 

 the existence of the germs of art, but also leisure for 

 their cultivation, and places man of the Ancient Stone Age 

 on a level of culture not inferior to that of savages yet 

 extant 



On pieces of ivory, horn, schist, &c., we find rude, but 

 spirited, pictures in outline, sometimes lightly shaded, of 

 the OS, the horse, the cave-bear, man, and, as evidence of 

 his wanderings to the coast, of the whale and seal. The 

 attitude of the animal is often ingeniously adapted to the 

 shape of the material, as in one specimen where the pre- 

 historic, certainly pre-Rapha>lite, artist, working on a fi'ag- 

 ment of reindeer's horn, has doubled up the fore-legs under 

 the belly and stretched out the hind-legs along the blade of 

 the poignard into which the horn was converted. But 

 among the many specimens unearthed, the most striking — if 

 we except that of a reindeer feeding, which was found in the 

 Kesslerloch cavern, near Schafl'hausen — is that of a mam- 

 moth, or woo'ly-haired elephant, on a fragment of ivory, 

 the long hair and curved tusks being faithfully drawn, 

 while the feet are hidden, as it were, in the long grass 

 through which the creature waded. That we are enabled 

 to say the sketch is faithful is owing to the discovery of 

 frozen carcasses of the mammoth in Siberia, with solidified 

 blood and flesh — in fact, in such perfect condition that even 

 microscopical sections of some of the delicate internal 

 tissues have been made from them. But the mammoth 

 and the grave that thus preserved him deserve a chapter 

 to themselves, for which, perhaps, space may hereafter be 

 accorded in Knowledge. 



With the materials from the bone-caves, we are able to 

 compose a fairly distinct picture of the rude tribes which 

 roamed over Europe at a period subsequent to the savages 

 of the Drift, yet enormously remote from the earliest 

 immigrants of the Newer Stone Age. Leading the wan- 

 dering life of triljes dependent for food on the chase, thoy 

 camped-out by the river-side, under trees, or huts built of 

 branches, resorting, as need arose, to tlie surer protection 

 of the cavern and the rock-shelter. With the barbed 

 spears and arrows, so common among their relics, they 

 caught the fish and shot the fowl ; trapping, stalking (as a 

 sketch from the Duruthy case shows), or killing with pon- 

 derous weapon of stone bigger game, as tlie reindeer, bison, 

 horse, sometimes the mammoth, rhinoceros, and cave-bear. 

 The flesh, cut into pieces with flint-knives, was cooked in 

 vessels of wood or skin (for no traces of pottery occur), 

 into which were dropped hot stones as "pot-boiler.s." 

 The bones were split for the marrow. The skins, scraped 

 with flints and sewn with bone needles threaded with 

 sinew, were welcome covering under the cold conditions of 



the Reindeer period — albeit, man was a more hairy creature 

 than now, and, as portraits from the Pyrenees caves show, 

 he protected his hands with long gloves. Reference has 

 been made already to indications of the use of " rouge " by 

 palaeolithic ladies in the red oxide of iron found in English 

 and Continental caves, and to this may be added the dis- 

 covery of necklaces of skulls and teeth, some of these 

 last of the lion and the bear. They were, perhaps, given 

 as proofs of their daring by the "braves" of the period ! 



Absolutely ignorant as we are of the whence and 

 whither of Drift-man, we are in like case respecting Cave- 

 man, although able to fix with more precision the limits of 

 his range. That he has no representatives among the races 

 of Europe is certain, but from evidence based on kindred 

 habits of life, artistic feeling and physical features inferred 

 from relics, as, for example, the smallness of hand from the 

 size of weapons and implements, some authorities regard 

 the Eskimo as his lineal descendants, " banished now, like 

 the musk-sheep, to the inclement regions of North America, 

 and isolated from all other peoples." Similarities such as 

 the above are, however, no suflicient proof of ethnical 

 relationship, and no definite opinion for or against the 

 connection between Cave-man and the Eskimo can be given- 

 Such clue to deterioration of race as the remains of 

 Pak-eolithic man themselves would furnish is imhappily 

 missing. The exceeding scarcity of human bones, both in 

 the drift and in caverns, does not, however, afiect the con- 

 clusions respecting man's high antiquity and primitive 

 savagery drawn from relics of undoubted human origin 

 imbedded in ancient deposits, and there are many reasons 

 which explain that scarcity. A sufiicing cause is at hand 

 in the changes, vast in their cumulative efiect, wrought 

 upon the earth's surface by rain, frost, torrent, and 

 chemical agents. Nature, so careful of the type, " so care- 

 less of the single life," is stiU less careful to preserve its 

 dead framework : and when we remember that all her 

 energies work for its conversion to uses of the lining, we 

 cease to wonder at the imperfection of the geological record 

 and at the small proportion of fossil remains of organisms, 

 even of the giant reptilians of Secondary times and the huge 

 mammalians of Tertiary times. The numerical inferiority 

 of man to the animals surrounding liim, especially hyrenas, 

 which would spare none of his bones, further explains 

 their absence, as does the fact cited by Sir John Lubbock, 

 that in the gravel beds of St Acheul, "no trace has ever 

 been found of any animal as small as man. The larger and 

 more solid bones of the elephant and rhinoceros, the ox, 

 horse, and stag, remain, but every vestige of the smaller 

 bones has perished." Coming to our own time, when the 

 Lake of Haarlem, on which there had been many wrecks 

 and naval engagements, was drained, only scanty fragments 

 of Spanish and other vessels were found in it, and not a 

 single human bone. 



When we contrast man's fragile body with tlie imperish- 

 able nature of his earliest implements, the sparseness and 

 fitfulness of his presence with their countless numbers and 

 continuous use over an enormous range of time, the scanti- 

 ness of the one and the abundance of the other bamsh our 

 surprise while not lessening our regret 



In the cave deposits, of which only a general account 

 has been gi\en in these papers, we touch the last traces 

 of man's presence in the Pala-olithic Age. As already 

 set forth, the great gulf of altogether diflerent physical 

 and climatal conditions separates him from the Neolitliic 

 races, between whom and the European peoples of to-day 

 some trace of continuity may be faintly discerned. Yet 

 the connection between the two is not to be severed, and 

 the testimony yielded by the chipped flints of the one 

 and the polished axes of the other points in the same 



