Chapter 3

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 God 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 assigned 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 pronounce 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 illustrate 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

Scraper 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 Chelleen[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 assigned 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 Hampshire, 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 associated with the bones of animals of extinct species.

Sometimes these Chelleen 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 Chelleen 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 scrapers, 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 Chelleen COUPS DE POING, but also in the cave or rock-shelter deposits. Amongst the mammalian remains with which they are associated 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 passed 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 quantities, 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 passed 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 workmanship. 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 polishing, 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, scrapers, 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. Massenat 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 pass 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 Japan 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. Coarse 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, Massat, 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

Amulet made of the penien bone of a bear, and found in the Marsoulas Cave.

There is no doubt that it is the caves of the south of France which have yielded the most interesting objects; needles with drilled eyes, and barbed arrows have been picked up in considerable numbers at Eyzies, Laugerie-Basse, at Bruniquel, Massat, and in the Madeleine Cave. Dr. Garrigou mentions some rein deer or roebuck antlers found in Ariege caves, which had been made into regular stilettos. In the deposits at Lafaye were fouled stilettos or bodkins, varying in length from two to six inches; needles measuring from nineteen to one hundred and five millimetres and provided with eyes; at Marsoulas were found an amulet made of the penien bone of a bear (Fig. 23), some pendants, and some pointed pieces of bone which astonish us by the delicacy of their workmanship, and the drawings with which they were adorned.

FIGURE 24

Various stone and bone objects from California.

At Paviland, Dr. Buckland discovered a wolf bone cut to a point. Kent's Hole yielded a number of needles resembling those of the Madeleine Cave; at Aggtelek (Hungary) were found some bones of the cave-bear pointed to serve as daggers, cut into scrapers or pierced to serve as amulets or ornaments. In Belgium, objects very similar to these have been found made of reindeer antler and dating from the most remote times. The antlers moulted by the reindeer in the spring were in especial request.

Excavations in the sepulchral mounds near San Francisco (California) have yielded thousands of bone implements (Fig. 24). Others similar to them have been found in the layers of cinders at Madisonville (Ohio) and beneath the numerous kitchen-middings of the coasts of the Atlantic and Pacific.

The processes employed by the cave-men were very simple. In one of the excavations superintended by him, M. Dupont[93] picked up the radius of a horse bearing symmetrically made incisions executed with a view to getting off splinters of the bone. These splinters were rounded by rubbing either with chips of flint, or on such polishers as are to be seen in any of the museums; then one end was sharpened, and the other, if need were, pierced with a hole. It is astonishing to find some of them as fine as the steel needles of the present day, and with perfectly round eyes made with the help of nothing but a rough flint, and there would still be some doubt on the subject, if M. Lartet[94] had not obtained exactly similar results by working on fragments of bone with the flints he had fouled in these excavations. Other experiments of a similar kind were no less conclusive, for Merk[95] perforated all ivory plaque with a pointed flint which he used as a gimlet.

Some objects, which are supposed to date from Neolithic times, bear witness to an altogether unexpected degree of civilization. In the heart of Germany, in the peat-bogs of Laybach and Worbzig on the banks of the Saale, have been found earthenware spoons of the shape of modern spatulae; at Geraffin on Lake Bienne, a finely shaped spoon made of the wood of a yew tree; and at Lagozza, another in shining black earthenware. Lartet had already brought to light a bone implement covered with ornaments in relief which he ascribed to the Palaeolithic period, and which he imagined had been used for extracting marrow; and another archaeologist tells of objects in reindeer antler found in the Gourdan Cave, which he thinks were used for a similar purpose. In the Saint-Germain Museum are preserved the remains of spoons from the bed of the Seine, and in the collections of England are fragments of bone taken from beneath the West-Kennet dolmen, which were all probably employed for extracting marrow. But the most important discovery of all, which leaves no doubt on the subject, is that made by M. Perrault at the Chassey Camp, near Chalon-sur-Saone, beneath a hearth dating from Neolithic times. He collected fourteen earthenware spoons; one of them of a round shape and remarkable for its size, was unfortunately broken (Fig. 25). It is of brown earthenware with a rather rough surface mixed with bits of flint, and is so much worn that it had evidently been in use a long time. Lastly two spoons, also of earthenware, have recently been found near Dondas (Lot-et-Garonne). The use of spoons, which certainly marked considerable progress, must therefore have spread rapidly.

FIGURE 25

Dipper found in the excavations at the Chassey Camp.

Long previously, however, pottery of a great variety of form bore witness to tire plastic skill of man. Every where we find vessels of coarse material mixed with grains of sand or mica to give more consistency to the paste which was baked in the fire, and had often no further ornamentation than the marks of the fingers of the potter. Does this pottery date from Palaeolithic times, or were the earthenware vessels later additions at the time of those disturbances of deposits which are the despair of archaeologists? A few examples may enable us better to answer this question.

Fraas tells us that fragments of pottery have been found in all the caves of Germany in which excavations have been made. He quotes that of Hohlefels, where he himself picked up such fragments amongst the bones of the mastodon, the mammoth, the rhinoceros, and the cave-lion, when the remains of these animals were for the first time found in Germany. In 1872, the making of the railway from Nuremberg to Ratisbon brought to light a cave of considerable depth. In its lower deposits were found nothing but the bones of hyenas, bears, and lions, of which the cave had been the resort for centuries. Among the most ancient deposits, relics of a similar kind were found in abundance, but now mixed with numerous fragments of pottery, worked flints, and fish bones, including those of the carp and the pike, with the bones of mammals, amongst which predominated those of the rhinoceros, most of them intentionally split open. At Argecilla, twenty leagues from Madrid, Vilanova discovered a regular workshop, in which were knives and flint arrow-heads, together with some very primitive pottery made of clay that had evidently been brought from a distance, as there is none in the district in which the pottery was found, In an upper deposit Vilanova collected more than two hundred implements made of diorite, a rock frequently used in Spain, some very remarkable celts of serpentine dating from the Neolithic period, and numerous fragments of very delicate pottery. Not far off he discovered another workshop, containing some very fine hatchets perfectly polished, and some keramic ware tastily ornamented. The progress made is as marked in the weapons and tools as in the pottery.

We have also seen some fragments of earthenware from the caves of Chiampo and Laglio, near Lake Como, and from that known as the Cave dei Colombi, in tire island of Palmaria, which was occupied shortly before the Neolithic period. But it is Belgium which yields the most decisive proof on this subject, and a visit to the Brussels Museum is enough to convince the most incredulous. The excavations made under M. Dupont in the caves of the Meuse and the Lesse have again and again brought to light fragments of pottery, associated with the bones of Palaeolithic animals. Schmerling, too, had already found similar fragments in the Engis Cave, mixed with flint weapons of the rudest description; and his discoveries have been strikingly confirmed by those recently made at Spy, near Namur,[96] and by others made by M. Fraipont.[97] In portions of this same Engis Cave not previously explored the learned professor of Liege found, in 1887, fragments of a vase of ovoid form, some flints of the Mousterien type, and some bones of extinct mammals. Most of the pottery in the Brussels Museum is black and of primitive make; some few fragments, however, are of finished workmanship. We may mention especially an ovoid vase, remarkable for its size and for its lateral projections. This vase, which is hand-modelled, came from the Frontal Cave; the clay is of blackish hue mixed with little bits of calcareous spar. M. Ordinaire, Vice-Consul for France at Callao, speaks of the CAYANES or MACAHUAS, which are earthenware basins of great symmetry of form, made by the Combos women, without turning wheels or mills of any kind. Though the elegant shape of the Frontal and other vases at first surprises us, reflection convinces us that men who could cut stones with such rare skill would certainly be able to produce equally good pottery.

FIGURE 26

Pottery of a so far unclassified type found in the Argent Cave (France).

Similar instances may easily be quoted from France. Excavations at Solutre have yielded several fragments of yellow, hand-made pottery very insufficiently baked; and other pieces have been found in the peat-bogs of Bastide de Bearn with the bones of reindeer, and worked flints similar to those found in Quaternary deposits. We may add that at Lafaye, Bize, and Pondre (Hainault) discoveries were made of pottery mixed with human remains and with those of animals now extinct; and in the Argent Cave (Basses-Alpes) a new type, shown in Fig. 26, has been found which merits special attention. In the very earliest days of prehistoric research the Nabrigas Cave (Lozere) was excavated by M. Joly, who found in it many fragments of pottery. In a volume published shortly before his death he relates the circumstances of his discovery, and earnestly maintains its authenticity. Later excavations, made under the direction of masters in prehistoric science, would have thrown some doubts on the assertions made by the professor of Toulouse, if MM. Martel and Launay had not brought forward a fresh proof in support of it. "On the 30th August, 1885,"[98] they say, "we picked up at Nabrigas in a deep hole, untouched by previous excavations and not displaced by water, some human bones and a piece of pottery side by side with two skeletons of URSUS SPELAEUS. The human bones, of indeterminate race, included an upper left maxillary, still retaining three teeth, an incomplete mastoid apophysis, and seven pieces of crania, belonging to different individuals. The piece of pottery only measured one and a half by two and a quarter inches; the clay is gray and friable, bound together with big bits of quartz, mica, and a few particles of charcoal." There would appear to be no sufficient reason to question the exactness of a discovery so carefully studied.

Many eminent archaeologists, however, maintain that pottery was completely unknown in Paleolithic times, and they do not hesitate to attribute to a later period any deposit in which it occurs where its presence cannot be accounted for by later displacements. M. Cartailhac declares that he has never been able to establish either in the south of France or in the central table-land a single fact which justifies us in asserting that the men of the Reindeer period, still less those of earlier epochs, knew how to make pottery. The first explorers, he adds, did not always distinguish with sufficient care the vestiges of different epochs, the relics of diverse origins. How often have bones carried along by water, or brought where they are found by animals, been mixed with those abandoned by men, or the deposits of the Neolithic period with those of the earliest Quaternary times! How often have the contents of a passage giving access to a cave been confounded with those of the cave itself! Hence deplorable errors, which it is impossible to rectify now. Evans and Geikie in their turn assert the absence in England[99] of Palaeolithic pottery, and Sir J. Lubbock energetically maintains this opinion.

Doubtless these are great authorities, and yet, in view of the facts now known, it is difficult to believe that man was long a stranger to the art of making pottery. Its invention required no great effort of intelligence, and its fabrication presented no great difficulties. Man had but to knead the soft clay which he trod under his foot, and the plasticity of which he could not fail to notice. This clay hardened in the sun, and hollows were formed as it shrunk -- the first vessel was discovered! Experience soon taught man to replace the heat of the sun by that of the fire, and to add a few bits of some hard substance to give the clay greater consistency. These first crude and clumsy vases have been preserved to our own day as irrefutable witnesses to the work of our ancestors. Though, therefore, we cannot be sure that pottery was made in Quaternary times by all the races that peopled Europe,[100] it is impossible to deny that a great many of them were in possession of the art. This difference in the degree of civilization attained to by men living but short distances from each other need not surprise us, for all travellers report similar facts amongst contemporary savage races.

The baking of pottery is a proof that the use of fire was known in the most remote times. The existence in various places of masses of cinders, fragments of charred wood, and half-calcined bones, proves it yet more decidedly. At Solutre, at Louverne (Mayenne), at Saint-Florent (Corsica), to give but a few examples, we find large slabs of half-calcined stone, laid flat and covered with heaps of cinders and all sorts of rubbish. These slabs formed the family hearth, where man prepared his food, with the help of the fire he had learnt to ignite and to keep burning.

How did man arrive at a discovery so vital to his existence? The Vedas assign the origin of fire to the rubbing together in a storm of the dry branches of trees. "The first men," says Vitruvius,[101] "were born, as were other animals, in the forests, caves, and woods. The thick trees violently agitated by the storm took fire, through the rubbing together of their branches; the fury of the flames terrified the men who found themselves near them and made them take to flight. Soon reassured, however, they gradually approached again and realized all the advantages they might gain for their bodies from the gentle warmth of the fire. They added fuel to the flames, they kept the fire up, they fetched other men whom they made understand by signs all the usefulness of this discovery. The men thus assembled articulated a few sounds, which, repeated every day, accidentally formed certain words which served to designate objects, and soon they had a language which enabled them to speak and to understand one another. It was, then, the discovery of fire which led men to come together to form a society, to live together, and to inhabit the same places."

Without pausing to consider the somewhat puerile theories of Vitruvius, or the myths which testify to the importance attached to fire by primeval man, we are at liberty to suppose that a conflagration caused by lightning or by the spontaneous combustion of vegetable materials in a state of fermentation, or other similar phenomena, made known to man the power of fire, and the use it might be to him. The accidental striking together of two flints produced a spark; observation taught men to obtain a similar result by the same process; a great step in advance was made, and the future of humanity was assured. M. Dupont picked up in the Chaleux Cave a kidney-shaped piece of iron pyrites, hollowed out in a peculiar manner, which had evidently been used to obtain the precious spark. The Christy collection contains a granite pebble with a hole the shape of a cup, which had evidently been used to obtain fire, by rubbing round in it a stick of very dry wood. The two methods employed at the present day were therefore already in use. Lumholz tells us that the Australians of Herbert River get fire by rubbing two pieces of wood together. The Indians of the northwest of Colorado, the Yapais of the Caroline Islands, and the Mincopies of the Andaman Isles, with many other races, know no other process. We must, however, still maintain a certain reserve in dealing with the fire-obtaining implements of so imperfect a nature, and belonging to times so remote as those called prehistoric.

During bad seasons, or in the bitter cold of winter, primeval man contented himself with flinging over his shoulders the skins of the animals he had killed. He prepared these skins with flint scrapers, and sewed them together with bone needles. In hot weather man probably roamed about stark naked. Shame is not a natural instinct; education alone develops it. Writing in 1617, Fynes Morison speaks of having seen at Cork young girls quite naked, engaged in crushing corn with a stone. The Tchoutchi women, says Nordenskiold, wear no clothes when in their tents, however great the cold. In tropical countries men, women, and children, all completely nude, went to meet the travellers who landed on their shores. Count Ursel, in a recent journey in Bolivia, in going through a little town, saw "near the public fountain some young girls already growing up making their ablutions and playing about in the garb of the earthly paradise." Travellers who visited Japan a few years ago reported that the inhabitants, without distinction of age or sex, came out of the water in a state of complete nudity, presenting a strange spectacle to European eyes. The sight of what is actually going on amongst comparatively civilized people in our own day enables us to understand better what must have been the state of things when the whole world was in a state of barbarism.

It was not until much later, in the times to which the name of Neolithic has been given, that men made stuffs, and replaced the skins of animals by lighter and more flexible garments. The inhabitants of the Lake Stations of Switzerland and of Italy cultivated hemp. At Wangen and at Robenhausen have been found shreds of coarsely woven cloth, and at Lagozza fragments of yet more primitive material. On some of these pieces it is supposed that traces of fringe and attempts at ornamentation have been made out. Even in the Perigord caves Lartet noticed some long slim needles which could not have been used for sewing skins; and he concluded that they were intended for more delicate work, perhaps even for embroidery. A new art, and one which we certainly should not have expected to find is now met with for the first time.

It is probable that our savage ancestors tatooed themselves, or painted their bodies, as did the Britons in the time of Caesar, and as do modern savages, or, not to go so far afield, as do English sailors and some of the workingmen of France.[102] At Montastruc have been picked up some fragments of red chalk, and in Mayenne of red iron ore, whilst in the cave of Spy was found a bone filled with a very fine red powder, and in that of Saltpetriere some powder of the same kind was discovered preserved from destruction in a shell. Lartet and Christy have made similar discoveries in the caves of the Dordogne; M. Dupont in a shelter at Chaleux, and M. Riviere at Baousse-Rousse. The Abbe Bourgeois found at Villehonneur not only a piece of red chalk as big as a nut, but also an oval-shaped pebble, which had been used for grinding it, the interstices of the surface still retaining traces of coloring matter.

Red chalk was not the only substance employed. At Chatelperron, were picked up fragments of manganese; at Cueva de Rocca, near Valentia, pieces of cinnabar; in the Placard Cave, bits of black lead; and in the different stations in the Pyrenees, especially in that of Aurensan, ochre has been found which was doubtless used for the same purpose. At Solutre, ochre, manganese, and graphite were found; the last named had been scraped with a flint, and the scratches made by it are still distinctly visible. From a Westphalian cave, Schaafhausen took some dark yellow ochre; at Castern (Staffordshire), a bit of this same calcareous substance, worn with long service, was picked tip; in Cantire (Argyleshire), a piece of red hematite, which had evidently been brought from Westmoreland or Lancashire; and lastly, in Kent's Hole was found some peroxide of manganese.

All these fragments of ochre or manganese, red chalk or black lead, were reduced to powder with the help of pebbles, artificially hollowed out. Everywhere we meet with these primitive mortars, and side by side with them other pebbles in their native condition, which had evidently been used for crushing the coloring matter.

A recent discovery tends to confirm the hypothesis that these colors were used for the decoration of the human body. A curious engraving on a bone represents the head and arm of a man, and on the lower part of the forearm it is easy to make out a four-sided design which evidently indicated tatooing.

In every country, and in every climate, we find men as well as women manifesting a taste for ornament. The progress of civilization has greatly increased this taste, but it existed as a natural instinct in the very earliest days of humanity, and the contemporary of the mammoth and the cave-bear, the cave-man cowering in his miserable den, sought for ornaments with which to deck himself. In the caves near the stations occupied by primeval men we find little bits of fossil coral, beads of hardened clay, the teeth of bears, wolves, and foxes, boars' tusks, and the jawbones of small mammals, fish-bones, and belemnites pierced with holes, and intended to be used as amulets or ornaments to be worn round the neck. At Lafaye, we find the incisors of small rodents serving the same purpose. The dweller in the Sordes Cave owned a precious necklace made of forty bears' and three lions' teeth. The teeth found often have on them ornamental lines, which doubtless indicated the rank or celebrated the deeds of the chief. The Abbe Bourgeois describes some stags' teeth found at Villehonneur (Charente), two of which bore scratches which may have had some signification. At Cro-Magnon were picked up some ivory plaques pierced with three holes; at Kent's bole were found some oval disks measuring five by three inches, which in the delicacy of their workmanship presented a curious contrast to the other objects taken from the same cave. In the Belgian caves here picked up some thin slices of jet and some ivory plaques, and in those of the south of France fragments of steatite, cut into rectangular and lozenge shapes, whilst in the Thayngen Cave was found a pendant of lignite (Fig. 27). Men were not content with natural products; fashion demanded new forms and fresh materials.

FIGURE 27

1. Lignite pendant. 2. Bone pendant (Thayngen Cave).

But what most attracted the attention of the ancient inhabitants of France were bright-colored shells. The caves of Roquemaure have yielded nearly a thousand disks and beads made of cockle-shells; at Cro-Magnon more than three hundred shells were picked up which formed a collar or necklace, which was not however so valuable as that of the man of Sordes. M. de Maret discovered at Placard numerous shells; some belonging to ocean species still extant, and others fossils of forms now extinct. Many of them are foreign to the country in which they were found. From the most remote times therefore the inhabitants of the present department of Charente fished in the Gulf of Gascony, crossed Aquitania, visited the shell marl deposits of Anjou and Touraine, and penetrated as far as the present Paris basin. The finding of the CYPRINA ISLANDICA in one of the French caves proves that the prehistoric men of France even went as far away as the north of England. This is by no means an isolated fact; numerous shells from the department of Champagne had been taken to tire shores of the Lesse and the Meuse. At Solutre have been found belemnites, ammonites, and Miocene shells, which were certainly never native to that district, with pieces of rock-crystal from the Alps, and beads made of a jadeite of unknown origin.

In Scotland have been found necklaces of nerites and limpets; at Aurignac, eighteen little plaques of cockle shell pierced with holes in the centre. At Laugerie-Basse, a man overtaken by a landslip had been crushed by the stones which had fallen upon him; time has destroyed his clothes, but the shells with which he had decked himself are still preserved.[103] He had worn four on his forehead, two on each shoulder, four on each knee, and two on each foot. All idea of these shells having formed a necklace must be abandoned; they were all notched, and had been used either. to adorn or fasten the clothes.

The most interesting discoveries, however, were those made in the caves of Baousse-Rousse, of which we have so often spoken. M. Riviere picked up the skeletons of two children, some thousand shells (NASSA NERITEA) artificially pierced, which had been used to deck their garments: Near an adult were other shells forming a necklace, a bracelet, an amulet, and a garter worn on the left leg; whilst on the head was a regular RESILLE or net, not unlike that of the Spanish national costume, which net was made of small nerita shells and kept in place by bone pins.

We must also mention amongst favorite ornaments beads made of jet and of very fine ochreous clay dried in the sun, of calcareous crystalline rock, and of grayish schist, and in other places of beads of amber or of hyaline quartz, the brightness of which attracted the attention. At the station of Menieux (Charente) with flints of a type to which it is usual to give the names of Mousterien or Solutreen, excavations have yielded numerous carefully polished balls of calx, varying in diameter from one to two inches. If there had been any doubts as to their use, those doubts would have been removed by the discovery at Laugerie-Basse of a fragment of the shoulder-blade of a reindeer on which was engraved the figure of a woman wearing round her neck a necklace of clumsy round balls. Other yet stranger ornaments have been found, for which what we have said about the cannibalism of early man should have prepared the reader. Our ancestors of the Stone age adorned themselves with necklaces of human teeth, and two skeletons have been dug out wearing round their necks this token of their victories. M. de Baye possesses in his collection some round pieces of skull pierced with holes (Fig. 28), and at the meeting of the American Association in 1886, at Ann Arbor (Michigan) were presented some ornaments made of human bones from a mound in Ohio.

In taking from the gangue in which it was imbedded a skull from the megalithic monument of Vaureal, Pruner Bey noticed a fragment of a human shoulder blade pierced with an incision in which was fixed a little rounded piece of bone. This style of ornament seems to have remained in use for many centuries, for M. Nicaise has lately discovered at Moulin d'Oyes (Marne) a necklace made of calx balls, shells, and pendants cut out of the scales of unio shells. On this necklace hung a round piece of human cranium, and in the Gallic cemetery at Varille, the exterior lamina of a human lumbar vertebra was fastened to a necklace made of coral beads.

FIGURE 28

Round pieces of skull pierced with holes (Al. de Baye's collection).

We are also acquainted with facts of another order, which may be mentioned in this connection. The men of Marjevols drank out of human crania; the Grenoble Museum owns a drinking-vessel of this kind; others have been discovered at Billancourt, at Chavannes, at the Chassey Camp, and at Sutz, AEfele, and Loci-as in Switzerland, as well as at Brookville in the State of Indiana. Dr. Prunieres possesses half a human radius, probably that of a female, carefully polished and converted into a stiletto (Fig. 29). Dr. Garrigou has an arrow-head made of a human bone, Pellegrino a fibula converted into a polisher found in the lower beds of the celebrated Castione TERREMARE near Parma. At the meeting of the Prehistoric Congress in Paris in 1869, Pereira da Costa mentioned a femora converted into a sceptre or staff of office, and to conclude this melancholy list, Longperier mentions a human bone pierced with regular openings, which, by a strange irony of death, served as a flute to delight the ears of the living. .

FIGURE 29

Part of a rounded piece of a human parietal-Stiletto made of the end of a human radius -- Disk made of the burr of a stag's antler.

One of the earliest necessities of human nature must have been companionship; for help was absolutely necessary to enable man to cope with the dangers surrounding him. Tribes, formed at first of members of the same family, must have existed from the very dawn of humanity. The reindeer phalanges, pierced to serve as whistles (Fig. 30), found at Eyzies, Schussenreid, Laugerie-Basse, Bruniquel, in the Chaffaud Cave and the Belgian shelters, in a peat-marsh of Scania, in the island of Palmaria, and in many other places, were doubtless used to summon men to war or to the chase. In the Cottes Cave were found some reindeer and aurochs' shanks, which may naturally be supposed to have served the same purpose. The curious objects preserved in the Christy collections must also have been used in war or in the chase. They bear, in addition to the mark of their owner, notches of different shapes commemorating his exploits in battle or in hunting. At Solutre, MM. Ducrost and Arcelin noticed fragments of elephants' tusks, calcareous plaques, and some sandstone disks from the Trias, with notches and equidistant lines evidently having a similar purpose.

FIGURE 30

Whistle from the Massenat Collection.

From whistles to regular musical instruments the transition is simple. Without describing that mentioned by M. de Longperier, which we cannot confidently assert to be of great antiquity, M. Piette, in one of his numerous excavations, discovered a primitive flute made of two bird bones which, when put together and blown into, produced modulations similar to those of the pipes used by the people of Oceania; the monotonous music of which is alluded to by Cook. Some time afterwards M. Piette noticed similar bones in the Rochebertier collection. So far we know of no other discovery of a similar kind.

The curious objects known under the name of staves of office would, if it were needed, afford yet another proof that the men of the Stone age lived in societies, possessed an organization, and acknowledged a chief. The staves of office consist of large pieces of reindeer or stag antler, artistically worked and presenting a pretty uniform appearance. Their surface is decorated with carvings and engravings representing animals, plants, and hunting scenes. They are thicker than they are wide, and the care often taken to reduce the thickness is a proof that an attempt was made to combine elegance and lightness with solidity (Figs. 31, 32, 33, 34, and 35). Nearly all of them are pierced at one end with large holes, of which the number varies. Some of these holes were later additions. May we perhaps see in them the signs of a priesthood, in which successive ranks were attained, and in which every new achievement was rewarded with a new distinction? This is difficult to prove, but these staves could not have been used as weapons or as tools; the care taken to cover them with ornaments, with the long time required for this decoration, shows the value their owners attached to them. The impossibility of any other hypothesis is the best proof we have of their use.

FIGURE 31

Staff of office.

Amongst the marvellous objects collected by Dr. Schliemann at Hissarlik, were two fragments of reindeer antler pierced with holes presenting a singular resemblance to those we have been describing. We may also compare with them the POGOMAGAN, the badge of office of Indian chiefs on the Mackenzie River, the Tartar KEMOUS, the sticks on which the Australians mark by conventional signs any event of importance to themselves or their tribe, and the similar objects from Persia, Assam, the Celebes, and New Zealand. But why seek examples so far away? Is not the memory of these ancient insignia preserved in our own day, and may they not have been the original forms of the sceptres of our kings and the croziers of our bishops?

FIGURE 32

Staff of office made of stag-horn pierced with four holes.

FIGURE 33

Staff of office found at Lafaye.

FIGURE 34

Staff of office in reindeer antler, with a horse engraved on it, found at Thayngen.

These staves, of which hundreds have now been found, were picked up in many different places, including the Goyet Cave in Belgium, the caves of Perigord and Charente, and the Veyrier Station in Savoy. At Thayngen, as many as twenty-three were found, all pierced with one hole only.[104] We must not omit to mention amongst these relies of ages gone by, one of the most interesting found in 1887 at Montgaudier (Charente) (Fig. 35), which bears on one side a representation of two seals, and on the other of two eels, the former of which especially are executed with a truth to form, boldness of execution, and delicacy of touch which are positively astonishing when we remember that the artist (we cannot refuse him this title) bad no tools at his disposal but a few miserable flints or roughly pointed bones. The hinder limbs, so strangely placed in amphibia, are faithfully rendered; each paw has its five toes, the texture of the skin can be made out, the head is delicately modelled; the muzzle with its whiskers, the eye, the orifice of the ear, all testify to real skill. The existence of the seal in the Quaternary epoch in the south of France was not known until quite recently, when Mr. Hardy found in a cave near Perigueux the remains of a seal (PHOCA GROENLANDICA), associated with quite an arctic fauna. In part at least therefore of the Quaternary period, very great cold must have prevailed in Perigord.[105]

With this staff of office were picked up some pieces of ivory covered with geometrical designs, engraved with some sharp implement, stilettos, bone needles, knives, flint scrapers, and, stranger still, the remains of the cave-lion, the cave-hyena, and the RHINOCEROS TICHORHINUS, all contemporaries of the most ancient Quaternary fauna.

FIGURE 35

Staff of office found at Montgaudier.

It was not only on the staves of office that the men of the Stone age exercised their talent. Many and varied are the subjects which have been found engraved on plaques of ivory or on stone, and incised on bears' teeth or on stag horn. We represent one forming the hilt of a dagger (Fig. 36), and another representing a bear with the convex forehead, characteristic of the species, engraved on a piece of schist (Fig. 37), and a mammoth engraved on an ivory plaque with its long mane, trunk, and curved tusks (Fig. 38). The artist who depicted these animals with such faithful exactitude evidently lived amongst them. The first discovery of this kind was made by Joly-Leterme in the Chaffaud Cave (Vienna); it was a reindeer bone on which two stags were represented.[106]

FIGURE 36

Carved dagger-hilt (Laugerie-Basse).

FIGURE 37

The great cave-bear, drawn on a pebble found in the Massat Cave (Garrigou collection).

In the Lortet Cave was found the bone of a stag on which could be made out a representation of fish and reindeer, whilst at Sordes was discovered a bear's tooth with a seal engraved upon it (Fig. 39), at Marsoulas a piece of rib on which is depicted an animal said to be a musk-ox (Fig. 40), and at Feyjat (Dordogne) a bird's bone bearing on it a drawing of three horses moving rapidly along. I am obliged to pass over many other most interesting examples, but I must not omit to mention the magnificent examples which form part of the Peccadeau collection at Lisle. Cartailhac mentions some chamois, an ox, and an elephant; some engraved on the bones of deer and others on fragments of ivory, or on reindeer antlers. The art of the cave-men was now at its zenith.

FIGURE 38

Mammoth, or elephant, from the Lena Cave.

FIGURE 39

Seal engraved on a bear's tooth found at Sordes.

But for one exception to which I shall refer again, it is curious to note that we only find these engravings and carvings, which so justly excite our astonishment in a district of limited extent, bounded on the north by the Charente, on the south by the Pyrenees and extending on the east no farther than the department of the Ariege. It is a pleasant thought that in the midst of their struggle for existence, and when they had to contend with gigantic pachyderms and formidable beasts of prey, our most remote ancestors, the contemporaries of the mammoth and the lion, already developed those artistic tendencies which are the glory of their descendants.

FIGURE 40

Fragment of a bone with regular designs. Fragment of rib on which is engraved a musk-ox, found in the Marsoulas Cave.

FIGURE 41

Head of a horse from the Thayngen Cave.

FIGURE 42

Bear engraved on a bone from the Thayngen Cave.

I referred above to ail exceptional example of prehistoric art found beyond the borders of France. In excavations in the Thayngen Cave, on the borders of Switzerland and Wurtemberg, twenty most remarkable examples were found, in which it is easy to recognize the horse (Fig. 41), the bear (Fig. 42), and the reindeer grazing (Fig. 43).[107] All, especially the last named, are rendered with such perfection, that it was at first supposed that they were the work of a forger. A searching inquiry has proved that they are nothing of the sort; a skilful zoologist would have been needed to represent the OVIBOS MOSCHATUS (Fig. 44), which retired many centuries ago towards the extreme north. If we do find a few rare attempts at art in other districts, they are absolutely rudimentary. The staff of office found in the Goyet Cave is of very rude workmanship. The Brussels Museum contains a few other specimens, of which the most important is a fragment of sandstone from the Frontal Cave, on which a few uncertain scratches represent what looks like a stag. Some indistinct traces of engraving have been made out on the bones found in the Altamira Cave, near Santander, and recently a bone on which a kind of horse was engraved, was picked up at Cresswell's Crags, Derbyshire, in a cave known in the district as MOTHER GRUNDY'S PARLOR. This specimen, as were those of Thayngen, was associated with numerous bones of Quaternary animals, amongst which those of the hippopotamus were the most curious.

FIGURE 43

Reindeer grazing, from the Thayngen Cave.

The representation of the human figure is extremely rare. I have already mentioned the young man trying to strike an aurochs which is running away from him; and the woman wearing a necklace. The former (Fig. 45), found at Laugerie, is engraved on a piece of reindeer antler about twenty-five centimetres long. The aurochs with its head down and quantities of bristling hair, widely open nostrils, arched and uplifted tail, presents the appearance of a terrified animal endeavoring to escape the danger threatening it. The man is naked, and has a round head, his hair is stiff and seems to stand up on the top of his skull; on the chin a short beard can clearly be made out; the face expresses the delight and excitement of the chase. The neck is long, the arm short, and the spine of unusual length. In the other example of the representation of the human figure, that of the woman wearing a necklace, drawn on a piece of a shoulder-blade of a reindeer, she is seen lying by a stag, and would seem to be in an advanced state of pregnancy. The piece of bone however is broken, and the head of the woman is lost, which of course greatly lessens the value of the relic.

FIGURE 44

Head of OVIBOS MOSCHATUS engraved on wood, found in the Thayngen Cave.

FIGURE 45

Young man chasing the aurochs, from Laugerie.

On a fragment of a staff of office from the Madeleine Cave is engraved a man between two horses' heads (Fig. 46). On a reindeer antler is represented a woman with flat breasts and very high hips, followed by a serpent; a shell from the crag near Walton-on-the-Naze had a human face roughly engraved on one side. The Abby, Bourgeois, in the excavations so fruitful of results at Rochebertier, found a rough carving of a human face (Fig. 47); M. Piette at Mas d'Azil found a little bust of a woman, carved on the root of the tooth of a horse. This statuette had a low forehead, a prominent nose, a retreating chin, and breasts of the negress type of the present day; characteristics quite unlike those of the skeletons taken from this cave or those near it. We wonder whether the artist meant to represent the features of a race other than his own.[108] M. du Bouchet mentions a rough sketch engraved on a flint discovered near Dax; the workman, doubtless daunted by the difficulties of his task, had abandoned it unfinished. It is, however, easy to tell what it was meant for. The skull is low and flat, the nose but slightly prominent, the eyes are oblique, and neither the mouth nor the chin are finished. The magnificent collection of the Marquis de Vibraye contains a little figure from Laugerie, representing a nude woman without arms. Thin and stiff, she is chiefly remarkable for the exaggerated size of the sexual organs, and for some peculiar protuberances on the loins. We dwell upon the former peculiarity, because it is so far extremely rare, whereas certain relics of the Greeks and Romans, in spite of the comparatively advanced civilization of these two great races, are such that they can only be exhibited in private museums. Such depravity as this implies was then quite an exception among the cave-men, and but for the one example I have just mentioned, I have no phallic representations to refer to except the few from the Massenat collection, which were shown at the Exhibition of 1889.

FIGURE 46

Fragment of a staff of office, from the Madeleine Cave.

FIGURE 47

Human face carved on a reindeer antler, found in the Rochebertier Cave (Charente).

We must not close this account of the art efforts of the men of the Stone age without mentioning the remarkable discovery by M. Siette, of flints covered with lines and geometrical designs colored with red chalk. These are the very earliest examples of the art of painting which have hitherto come to our knowledge. They bear witness to a remarkable progress made by our remote ancestors of the valleys of the Pyrenees.

We cannot more appropriately close this chapter than by quoting the magnificent verse of Lucretius, which brings before us, better than could a long description, the condition of these men, and the humble starting-point from which humanity has advanced to achieve its immortal destiny:

Necdum res igni scibant tractare neque uti Pellibus et spoliis corpus vestire ferarum, Sed nemora atque caveos monteis sylvasque colebant Et frutices inter condebant squalida membra Verbera ventorum vitare imbreisque coactei.[109]