Part 3 (1/2)
It is further significant that there is evidence to show that the larger and stronger race was that which prevailed in Europe at the time of its greatest elevation above the sea and greatest horizontal extent, and when its fauna included many large quadrupeds now extinct. This race of giants was thus in the possession of a greater continental area than that now existing, and had to contend with gigantic brute rivals for the possession of the world. It is also not improbable that this early race became extinct in Europe in consequence of the physical changes which occurred in connection with the subsidence that reduced the land to its present limits, and that the feebler race which succeeded came in as the appropriate accompaniment of a diminished land-surface and a less genial climate in the early historic period. The older races are those usually cla.s.sed as palaeolithic, and are supposed to antedate the period of polished stone; but this may, to some extent, be a prejudice of collectors, who have arrived at a foregone conclusion as to distinctions of this kind. Judging from the great cranial capacity of the older race and the small number of their skeletons found, it might be fair to suppose that they represent rude outlying tribes belonging to nations which elsewhere had attained to greater population and culture.
Lastly, all of these old European races were Turanian, Mongolian, or American in their head-forms and features, as well as in their habits, implements, and arts. In other words, their nearest affinities were with races of men which in the modern world are the oldest and most widely distributed.
The reader, reflecting on what he has learned from history, may be disposed here to ask, Must we suppose Adam to have been one of these Turanian men, like the 'Old Man of Cro-magnon'? In answer, I would say that there is no good reason to regard the first man as having resembled a Greek Apollo or an Adonis. He was probably of sterner and more muscular mould. But he was probably more akin to the more delicate and refined race represented by the solitary skull of Truchere, while the gigantic palaeocosmic men of the European caves are more likely to have been representatives of that terrible and powerful race who filled the antediluvian world with violence, and who reappear in postdiluvian times as the Anakim and traditional giants, who const.i.tute a feature in the early history of so many countries. Perhaps nothing is more curious in the revelations as to the most ancient cave men than that they confirm the old belief that there were 'giants in those days.' At the same time we must bear in mind that the more diminutive race which survived must have existed previously in some part of the world, and must have furnished the survivors of the succeeding subsidence (see ill.u.s.tration on p. 82).
And now let us pause for a moment to picture these so-called palaeolithic men. What could the 'Old Man of Cro-magnon' have told us, had we been able to sit by his hearth and listen understandingly to his speech?--which, if we may judge from the form of his palate-bones, must have resembled more that of the Americans or Mongolians than of any modern European people. He had, no doubt, travelled far, for to his stalwart limbs a long journey through forests and over plains and mountains would be a mere pastime. He may have bestridden the wild horse, which seems to have abounded at the time in France, and he may have launched his canoe on the waters of the Atlantic. His experience and memory might extend back a century or more, and his traditional lore might go back to the times of the first mother of our race. Did he live in that wide post-pliocene continent which extended westward through Ireland? Did he know and had he visited the more cultured nations that lived in the great plains of the Mediterranean Valley, or on that nameless river which flowed through the land now covered by the German Ocean? Had he visited or seen from afar the great island Atlantis, whose inhabitants could almost see in the sunset sky the islands of the blest?
Could he have told us of the huge animals of the antediluvian world, and of the feats of the men of renown who contended with these animal giants? We can but conjecture all this. But, mute though they may be as to the details of their lives, the man of Cro-magnon and his contemporaries are eloquent of one great truth, in which they coincide with the Americans and with the primitive men of all the early ages.
They tell us that primitive man had the same high cerebral organisation which he possesses now, and, we may infer, the same high intellectual and moral nature, fitting him for communion with G.o.d and heads.h.i.+p over the lower world. They indicate also, like the mound-builders, who preceded the North American Indian, that man's earlier state was the best--that he had been a high and n.o.ble creature before he became a savage. It is not conceivable that their high development of brain and mind could have spontaneously engrafted itself on a mere brutal and savage life. These gifts must be remnants of a n.o.ble organisation degraded by moral evil. They thus justify the tradition of a Golden and Edenic Age, and mutely protest against the philosophy of progressive development as applied to man, while they bear witness to the similarity in all important characters of the oldest prehistoric men with that variety of our species which is at the present day at once the most widely extended and the most primitive in its manners and usages.[19]
[19] Perhaps no feature of this early human age is more remarkable than its artistic productions. Recent testimony, more especially that of the very careful explorers of the deposits at Spy, in Belgium, seems to show existence of the potter's art, though this until lately was denied.
These people ornamented their clothing with pearly and coloured sh.e.l.ls, and made beautiful necklaces. We have already noticed that found in the cave of Goyet. At Sordes, in the Pyrenees, in a very old interment of this period, there was a necklace of forty-three teeth of the cave lion and cave bear, carved with figures of animals (see p. 71). The handle of a piercer, represented on p. 59, is a marvel of skilful adaptation of an animal form to produce a handle fitted to be firmly and conveniently grasped by the human hand. The figure of the mammoth on p. 68 shows how a few bold lines may produce a vigorous and truthful sketch; and mult.i.tudes of such carvings and drawings have been found in France as well as in Germany and Belgium. Even the chipping of flint is an art requiring much skill to produce the fine knives, spears, &c., so commonly found, and there is evidence that these were fitted into strong and probably artistic handles. All this and much more testifies to the fact that our palaeocosmic men were no mean artists as well as artificers.
[Ill.u.s.tration: OUTLINE OF MAMMOTH, CARVED ON A PLATE OF IVORY, FROM THE CAVE OF LA MADELEINE]
CHAPTER V
SUBDIVISIONS AND CONDITIONS OF THE PALANTHROPIC AGE
While all geologists and archaeologists are agreed in the existence of the men contemporary with the mammoth and reindeer in Europe, and in the fact of two or even three races of men having existed in that period, various opinions are entertained as to the succession of events and the chronological cla.s.sification of the remains. Mortillet, whose arrangement has been usually adopted in France, recognises a period of chipped stone or palaeolithic period, corresponding to the palanthropic age, and a period of polished stone, corresponding to the neanthropic age. Within the former he believes that it is possible to separate different ages,[20] from the character of the implements and other remains. The first two are characterised by the presence of two elephants, the mammoth and another species (_E. antiquus_), the next two by the mammoth a.s.sociated with the cave bear and reindeer, the last by the nearly entire predominance of the reindeer. Dupont is content in Belgium to recognise a mammoth age and a reindeer age, but the latter perhaps includes some deposits which are properly neanthropic.
[20] Respectively the Achulienne, Ch.e.l.lienne, Mousterienne, Soloutrienne, and Magdalenienne.
Carthaillac places the whole palanthropic age as quaternary, properly so-called, which he separates from the tertiary on the one hand and the modern on the other, and divides his quaternary into two stages, the first characterised by _E. antiquus_ and Mortillet's Ch.e.l.lean men, the second by the mammoth and reindeer--the earlier of these two periods being warm and moist, the latter cold and dry. The table appended to this chapter is modified from those of Carthaillac. Dawkins, while admitting a similar twofold division, calls the earlier men those of the river gravels, the latter those of the caves.
This twofold division of the palanthropic age requires some consideration. In the first place, there is reason to believe that the Canstadt race locally preceded that of Cro-magnon. I say locally, for no one supposes that they are distinct species, and as varietal forms they may have originated from a common intermediate ancestor, or the humbler race may be the earlier, and the higher race an improvement on it, or the lower race may have been a degraded type of the higher. Probably also there was a third, the Truchere race, and the Cro-magnon race may have been a half-breed or metis progeny.
[Ill.u.s.tration: TOOTH OF CAVE BEAR, WITH ENGRAVING OF A SEAL, FROM A COLLAR FOUND AT SORDES, PYRENEES (after Carthaillac)]
Again, there was an undoubted change of fauna within the palanthropic age, and this dependent on or accompanied by a change of climate. The earlier elephant of the period (_E. antiquus_) and its companion animals are believed to have been suited to a warm climate, and to have entered Europe from the south-*east. With, or immediately after, them came man, and this conclusion harmonises with human physiology, for we know that man must have originated in a warm climate, and must in the first place have been a feeder on fruits and grains or other nutritious vegetable products. In this early stage he would be nearly dest.i.tute of implements and weapons. But in the succeeding cold period, one tribe after another might be obliged to resort to hunting habits, to the use of fire and of clothing, and of natural and artificial shelter. Hence the peculiarities of the cave men, who, while they advanced in art, may have also advanced in ferocity and warlike habits, under the pressure of necessity and compet.i.tion. Hence also their a.s.sociation more and more closely with such animals as the reindeer, the hairy mammoth, and the woolly rhinoceros, while the previous species had migrated to the south or perished. Thus it would appear that the men of the mammoth age may not be really the most primitive men, but a derivative from them under pressure of a severe climate. This possibility may be summed up as follows. If the early part of the post-glacial or palanthropic era was characterised by a milder climate than its later period, this may have had much to do with the change in implements and weapons. The earliest men probably subsisted merely on natural fruits and other vegetable productions. To secure these in a mild climate they would require no implements, except perhaps to dig for roots or to crack nuts. If they migrated into a colder climate, or if the climate became more severe, they might be obliged to become hunters and fishermen, and would invent new implements and weapons, not because they had advanced in civilisation, but, as Lamech has it in Genesis, 'because of the ground which the Lord had cursed,' and which would no longer yield food to them. At the same time they might contend with one another for the most sheltered and productive stations, and so war might further stimulate that very questionable advance in civilisation which consists in the improvement of weapons of destruction. We have much to learn as to these matters; but we must, if we have any regard to physiology and to natural probability, start from the idea that the most primitive men were frugivorous and fitted for a mild climate. In this case we should expect that these earliest men would leave behind them scarcely any weapons or implements except of the simplest kind, and that their apparent progress in the arts of war and the chase might in reality be evidence, up to a certain point at least, of increasing barbarism.
Primitive as well as modern men present in these respects strange paradoxes.
We have to inquire in the sequel as to the cause of the final disappearance of the palaeocosmic men, and as to the question whether history is cognisant of any such human period as that which has occupied us in this chapter, or whether, as has sometimes been a.s.sumed, it is altogether prehistoric.
On the subject of the correlation of the French and Belgian discoveries as to primitive man, a most interesting and important communication was made by Dupont to the Geological Society of Belgium in 1892.[21] The veteran explorer of the Belgian caves addresses himself in this paper to a careful comparison of the geological relations, animal remains and human relics in these caves, and in the gravels and 'quaternary' clays a.s.sociated with them. He arrives at the conclusion, which I had already stated,[22] that these deposits are contemporaneous and show similar stages, but that the mammoth age properly so-called, in which the primitive people fed on the mammoth and its companion the woolly rhinoceros, extended to a later date in Belgium than in France, so that the mammoth age of Dupont and the reindeer age of the French archaeologists overlap one another. He notes in connection with this that there is evidence of the continued existence of the mammoth in the so-called reindeer age of France, in the discovery in caves of that period of plates of ivory with the portrait of the mammoth engraved on them. It would therefore appear either that the mammoth earlier became extinct or rare in France, perhaps on account of climatal changes, or perhaps because of destruction by man, or that the habits of the French populations changed in such a way as to cause them to confine themselves to smaller game. In either case, we now find that the whole palanthropic age is one period. On the other hand, Dupont agrees with Mortillet that there is a hiatus, physical, palaeontological and anthropological, between the so-called palaeolithic and neolithic periods, that is, between the palanthropic and neanthropic ages.
[21] _Bulletin de la Societe Belge de Geologie_, janvier 1893. This paper should be studied by all interested in the subject.
[22] _Fossil Men._
Dupont holds that the plain-dwellers (_Pedionomytes_, as he calls them) were the earliest known men, corresponding to the oldest gravel remains of Dawkins and Prestwich, and points out that their implements are in size and form, though not in material and finish, allied to those of the polished stone age, which might thus be regarded as an improved continuation or revival of this first period. This might be read to mean, as above maintained, that the earliest men were peaceful and perhaps in part agricultural, that they were succeeded by lawless, powerful, artistic and savage peoples, and when the latter were swept away that a remnant of the primitive stock repossessed the land. If this proves to be the net result, it will correspond exactly with our old historical beliefs.
I was struck in reading this paper with a remark of Dupont on the unprogressive character of the men of the mammoth age, who seem to have made so little advance in the arts of life during the period of their occupation of Europe. Perhaps he makes too great an estimate of the length of their residence, or does not sufficiently consider how long men about their stage of civilisation have remained at the same point in the historic period. Nor does he consider the possibility of the cave men belonging to ruder tribes of a race which may have inhabited better if more perishable residences elsewhere. In any case, all experience shows that to such a people any great advance in the arts could come only by missionary influence from abroad, or by the appearance of some great inventive genius among themselves; and no good fortune of this kind seems to have happened to the Canstadt or Cro-magnon men, or if it did, they rejected their opportunity, as so many others have since done.
Still, perhaps, we need not pity them too much. They lived in a young and fresh condition of the earth, enjoyed a vigorous health, and were gifted with rare strength and energy. They were bountifully provided for by nature as to food and clothing, were in slavery to no man, lived in families bound together by ties of affection, and were free to migrate over vast territories according to the exigencies of the seasons. They had some taste in dress and ornaments, and no doubt enjoyed their clever carvings on bone and ivory as much as any modern lovers of art their most finished treasures. A Cro-magnon 'brave,' tall, muscular and graceful in movement, clad in well-dressed skins, ornamented with polished sh.e.l.ls and ivory pendants, with a pearly sh.e.l.l helmet, probably decked with feathers, and armed with his flint-headed lance and skull-cracker of reindeer antler handsomely carved, must have been a somewhat n.o.ble savage, and he must have rejoiced in the chase of the mammoth, the rhinoceros, the bison, and the wild horse and reindeer, and in launching his curiously-constructed harpoons against the salmon and other larger fish that haunted the rivers.
Nor was he dest.i.tute of higher hopes. He laid his dead reverently in the bosom of mother earth, with such things as had been pleasant or useful in life, and his rudimentary bible, or 'book of the dead,' must have at least included the idea--'This corruptible shall put on incorruption, this mortal immortality.' That is the meaning of such funeral gifts in every part of the world, and has always been so, as far as we can learn.