CHAPTER VIII.Tombs.The true history of man will be found in his tombs, says Thucydides; and as a matter of fact the sepulchre has ever occupied much of the thoughts of man, the result of a religious sentiment, a conviction that all does not end with the life which so quickly passes by.From the very earliest times we meet with tokens of the hopes and fears connected with a future existence; but, as I have already stated, the human bones that can with certainty be said to date from Palæolithic times are very rare. We know but very few facts justifying us in asserting that the contemporary of the mammoth and of the cave bear had already learnt to respect the remains of what had once been a man like himself. One of these few facts deserves, I think, to be noticed with some detail.In 1886, excavations in the cave of Spy1(Namur), or rather in a terrace some thirty-six feet long by nineteen and a half wide giving access to it, brought to light two human skeletons. One was that of an individual already advanced in life, probably of the feminine sex, the other of a man in the prime of life. These skeletons were imbedded in a very hard breccia containing also fragments of ivory and numerous flints of very small size. Some of them had very fine scratches on both sides. From what I could learn on the spot, the skeletons when found were in a recumbent position. The bones, few of which were missing, were still in their natural position, and near to one of them were picked up several arrow- or lance-heads, one of which, of phtanite, some two and a half inches long, was of the purest Moustérien type. The bones were those of short, squat individuals, and the skulls were of the type of the Canstadt race, the most ancient of which anything is known; the thickness of the crania was about one third of an inch. The forehead, is low and retreating, the eyebrows are prominent, and the lower jaws strong and well developed.At the same level and in that immediately above it were picked up the remains of the mammoth, theRhinoceros tichorhinus, the cave bear, and the large cave hyena, the reindeer, and numerous other mammals belonging to the Quaternary fauna. Everything points to the conclusion that the man and woman whose remains have so opportunely come to light were contemporary with these animals, and that their bodies were placed after death in the cave in which they were found.Belgium has furnished numerous examples of sepulchral caves, of a date, however, less ancient than that we have been considering. Recent excavations in the Chauvaux Cave revealed two skeletons leaning against the walls in a crouching position, the legs tucked under the body. In the Gendron Cave M. Dupont discovered seventeen skeletons lying in a low, narrow passage, stretched out at full length with the feet toward the wall, and arranged in twos and threes, one above the other. In the middle of all these dead was the skeleton of one man placed upright, as if to watch over the other bodies.The Duruthy Cave at Sordes opens near the point of junction of the waters of the Pan and Oloron, whence their united waters flow into the Adour. At the northern extremity of this cave is a natural niche in which lay more than thirty skeletons, some of men, some of women, and some of children, mixed together in the greatest confusion. Worked flints, bone stilettos, and ornaments lay around, all of the forms characteristic of Palæolithic times.It would seem that we have here evidence of the practice of a funeral rite, which consisted in first stripping the bodies of flesh, and then laying the bones in caves, where they were often left unnoticed by the living occupants of the same refuge.2The caves of Baoussé-Roussé, near Mentone, give fresh proof of the extension of this rite, if we may so call it. The skeletons lay upon a bed of powdered iron ore, in some cases as much as two fifths of an inch thick, and this accumulation could not have taken place if the skeleton had not been deprived of its flesh before inhumation. The flesh must have been taken off by some rapid process, for the bones remain, as a general rule, in their natural positions, united by their tendons and ligaments. In Italy, says Issel, the cave men buried their dead in the caves they lived in, a thin layer of earth alone separating them from the living; the bodies, adds Pigorini,3generally lay on the left side, the head rested on the left hand, and the knees were bent. Beside the skeleton was placed a vase containing red chalk, to be used for painting the body in the new world it was supposed to be about to enter.We could quote similar discoveries in Sicily, Belgium, and the southern Pyrenees. Beneath the tumulus of Plouhennec, in Brittany, bones were strewn about in the greatest disorder. Some archæologists are of opinion that the openings in certain dolmens were used for throwing in the bones of the dead who successively went to join their ancestors. In many of the Long Barrows of England the bones appear to have been flung in pell-mell; the space was too narrow to hold the complete body, so that before inhumation the flesh must have been separated from the bones. In no other way can we explain the confusion in which the human remains lay when they were discovered.4Pigorini thinks this is a proof that primitive races worshipped their dead, and held their bodies in veneration.5Perhaps they even carried them about in their migrations. However that may be, the custom of separating the flesh from the bones was continued until cremation became general. This would explain the huge ossuaries found in regions so widely separated.Although, however, the mode of sepulture we have just described was practised for a long time in certain places, we cannot admit it to have been general. In certain megalithic tombs we find dispositions similar to those described in speaking of the Gendron Cave. Excavations beneath the Port-Blanc dolmen (Morbihan) brought to light a rough pavement on which lay numbers of skeletons, closely packed one against another, which skeletons were probably those of men who had been held in honor, and to commemorate whom the dolmen was set up. Separated from them by a layer of stones and earth rested another series of skeletons, not so closely packed as the first. The new-comers had respected their predecessors, and no one had violated the sanctuary of the dead. Similar facts were noted at Grand Compans, near Luzarches,6and it is evident that successive inhumations beneath dolmens often took place, and instances might, if necessary, be multiplied.Another singular funeral rite was practised in remote antiquity. Many of the bones found in the various caves of Mentone were colored with red hematite.7As this was only the case with the bones of adults, those of children retaining their natural whiteness, it evidently had some special significance. In 1880, the opening of a cave of the Stone age in the district of Anagni, a short distance from Rome, brought to light the facial portion of a human cranium, colored bright red with cinnabar. Nor are these by any means exceptional cases, for similar coloration was noticed on bones picked up at Finalmarina and several other places in Liguria and Sicily. The custom had therefore become general in the Neolithic period in the whole of the Italian peninsula.8We also meet with it in other countries; at the Prehistoric Congress, when in session at Lisbon, Dolgado added to what was said about the discoveries in Italy the fact that the cave men of Furninha practised a similar rite. In thekurganesof the department of Kiev crania were found colored with a mineral substance, fragments of which were strewn about near the skeletons. The most ancient of thekurganesappear to date from the Stone age, for in them were found implements made of flint and reindeer-horn, mixed with the bones of rodents9long since extinct in that district. A similar practice is met with in the tombs of Poland, many bones being covered with a coating of red color, in some instances one fifth of an inch thick. Excavations in the Kitor valley (province of Irkutsk, Siberia have brought to light several tombs which appear to date from the sauce period as thekurganesof Kiew. The dead were buried with the weapons and ornaments they would like to use in the new life which had begun for them. The tomb was then filled in with sand, with which care was taken to mix plenty of red ochre. It is difficult not to conclude that this was a relic of a rite fallen into desuetude.At the present day certain tribes of North America expose their dead on the tops of trees, and before burying the bones, when stripped of their flesh, cover them with a coating of a bright red color. In the island of Espiritu Santo many human bones have also been picked up painted with an oxide of argillaceous iron. These customs, strange as they may appear, were evidently practised in honor of ancestors; atavism is as clearly shown in customs and traditions as in physical structure.At Solutré is a sepulchre formed of unhewn slabs of stone. The body of the dead rested on a thick bed of the broken and crushed bones of horses. The remains of reindeer were mixed with the human bones. Were these too relics of funeral rites, and were the animal bones those of the horses and reindeer that had belonged to their hunter? It is impossible to say. Solutré, situated as it was on an admirable site on a hill overlooking the valley of the Seine, protected from the north winds and close to a plentiful stream, has also been a favorite resort of man. In the tombs all ages are mixed together, and if some do indeed date from Neolithic times, others are Roman, Burgundian, Merovingian. There may be among them a certain number dating from the Reindeer period; that is about all we can assert with any certainty in the present state of our knowledge. The Abbé Ducrost, however, in an important essay10asserts that he has found incontrovertible proofs of the interment of Solutréens on the hearths of their homes in Palæolithic times. If this be so, the custom is one of frequent occurrence, and has been continued for centuries; for De Colanges, in his fine work on ancient cities, shows that at Rome the earliest tombs were on the hearth itself of the dwelling. De Mortillet, on the other hand, dwells very earnestly on the mode of inhumation at Solutré, and sees in the juxtaposition of human remains and thedébrisof hearths but the result of displacement, and of the regular turning upside down of which the hill of Solutré has been the scene. To this Reinach replied, to the effect that, whereas a few years ago De Mortillet’s authority led many archæologists to suppose that the men of the Reindeer period did not bury their dead, facts, ever more important than theories, have now proved beyond a doubt that this very decided opinion is a mistake. Not only did the men of remote antiquity bury their dead; they laid them, as at Solutré, on the hearths near which they had lived.11The dead were often buried seated or bent forward, and it is interesting to note the same custom beneath the mounds of America and the tumuli of Europe. It is touching to see how in death men wished to recall their life on earth; the cradle was, so to speak, reproduced in the tomb, and man lay on the bosom of earth, the common mother of humanity, like the child on the bosom of his own mother. Perhaps, too, the seated position was meant to indicate that man, who had never known rest during his hard struggle for existence, had found it at last in his new life. The men of the rough and barbarous times of the remote past were unable to conceive the idea of a future different to the present, or of a life which was not in every respect the same as that on earth had been.Whatever may have been the motive, this mode of burial was practised from the Madeleine period.12At Bruniquel, in Aveyron, the dead were found crouching in their last home. This position is, however, peculiarly characteristic of Neolithic times, and is met with throughout Europe. Eight skeletons were recently discovered bending forward in the sepulchral cave of Schwann (Mecklenburg). In Scandinavia there are so many similar cases that it is difficult to make a selection. Tit the sepulchral cave of Oxevalla (East Gothland) the dead are all in crouching attitudes, and tumuli dating from the most remote antiquity cover over a passage, formed of immense blocks of stone, leading to a central chamber, in which are numerous seated skeletons resting against the walls.On the shores of the Mediterranean, excavations of the Vence Cave (Alpes-Maritimes) brought to light a number of dead arranged in a circle as if about to take a meal in common. The bodies were crouching in the position of men sitting on their heels; the spinal column was bent forward and the head nearly touched the knees. In the centre of this strange group were noticed some fragments of pottery and the remains of a large bird, a buzzard probably. Perhaps its death among the corpses was a mere accident.13The dolmens of Aveyron yielded some flint-flakes and arrow-heads, pieces of pottery, pendants, and bone, stone, shell, and slate-colored schist beads. Beneath one of these dolmens was found one small bronze object, quite an exceptional instance of the occurrence of that metal. The skeletons rested against the walls. In one of the tombs some human bones, which bad been originally placed at the entrance to the cave, had been moved to the back; the vanquished had here, as in life, to give way before the conquerors. Excavations in the Mané-Lud tomb have led explorers to suppose that here too the corpses were buried in a crouching position. It is the same at Luzarches and in the Varennes cemetery near Dormans.14In the last named were found traces of a fire that had been lit above the tomb, and some pottery was picked up ornamented with hollow lines, filled with some white matter not unlike barbotine. M. de Baye says this mode of interment is confined to the district of Marne; but for all that he himself gives an example of its practice elsewhere.15In the prehistoric tombs discovered at Cape Blanc-Nez, near Escalles (Pas-de-Calais), the position in which the body had been interred could be made out in four instances. The ends of the tibiæ, humeri, and .radii were united, the bones of the hands were found near the clavicles, so that the bodies had evidently been bending forward with the arms crossed and the fingers pointing toward the shoulders.16Similar facts are quoted from a cave at Equehen on the plateau which stretches along the seashore on the east of Boulogne. The bodies, to the number of nine, were crouching with the face turned toward the entrance of the cave, which was closed with great blocks of sandstone. Two polished stone hatchets, broken doubtless in accordance with some sepulchral rite, had been placed near the skeletons.Numerous human bones were found in the Cravanche Cave near Belfort, which probably dates from the close of the Neolithic period, judging from the total absence of metal and the shape of the flint and bone implements picked up. Here too the bodies were bent almost double, the head drooping forward and the knees drawn up nearly to the chin. Several of these skeletons were completely imbedded in the stalagmite which had formed in the cave, the head and knees alone emerging from the solid mass. The position in which they were originally placed had thus of necessity been maintained.17A similar rite, for rite we must call this mode of burial, was practised in Italy, and the Chevalier de Rossi speaks of a tomb of the Neolithic period at Cantalupo, near Rome, in which one of the bodies wag placed in the crouching attitude, which he says is familiar to all who have studied ancient tombs.18This practice was still continued in protohistoric times; Schliemann noticed it in the excavations he superintended at Mykenæ, and Homer says that amongst the Lybians the dead were buried seated.The necropolis near Constantine contains numerous megalithic monuments. These are either round or square cromlechs surrounding sarcophagi, or circularenceintes, in which the dead were laid in a trench. In the former there are always a great many funeral objects in the tomb, and the body of the dead is in a crouching posture; in the latter there are few things beside the corpse itself, and that is in a recumbent position. Do these peculiarities denote different races? Do the tombs all date from the same period, or are these arrangements but fresh indications of the difference everywhere maintained between social classes? It is difficult to decide, and we must be content with enumerating facts. We may add, however, that the crouching position of corpses is constantly met with in Africa19and in North and South America, from Canada to Patagonia.20The funeral rites of which we have spoken necessarily imply burial; man did not abandon to wild beasts or birds of prey the bodies of those who had once been like himself. At Aurignac, at Bruniquel, and in the Frontal Cave, the cave man bad taken the precaution of closing with the largest stones he could find the entrances to the last resting-places of those belonging to him. The caves ofL’Homme Mort, and of Petit-Morin which date from Neolithic times, retain traces of similar blocking up. There were five entrances to the cave of Garenne de Verneuil (Marne) in which was a regular ossuary; the floor was paved and the roof kept up with eleven upright stones. The objects in the tomb with the dead were a clumsy earthenware vase, a few flint knives, and some shell necklace beads.The sides of the almost inaccessible mountains of Peru are pierced, at a height of several hundred feet, with numerous caves which have nearly all been artificially enlarged. It was in them that the Peruvians placed their dead, and the people of the country still call themTantama Marcaor abodes of desolation. The entrances were concealed with extreme care, but this care did not save the tombs from violation; the greed for the treasures supposed to be concealed in the tombs was too great for respect to the unknown dead to hold curiosity in check.In other cases, the dead was laid near the hearth which had been that of his home when living, and his abode during life became his tomb. The dolmens,cella, andGangrabenin Germany, and the barrows in England, appear to bear witness to the prevalence of a similar custom in those countries; and we find the same idea perpetuated even when cremation became general. At Alba, in Latium, at Marino, near Albano, at Vetulonia and Corneto-Tarquinia were discovered urns with doors, windows, and a roof imitating human dwellings.21Later, other modes of sepulture came into use. In Marne M. Nicaise made out seven funeral pits22resembling in shape, he tells us, long-necked bottles with flat bottoms. One of these pits at Tours-sur-Marne contained at least forty skeletons, and among the bones were found thirty-four polished stone hatchets, fifty knives, two flint lance-heads and a great many arrows with transverse edges, a necklace of little round bits of limestone, several fragments of coarse pottery which had been mixed with grains of silica and baked in the fire, and lastly three little flasks made of stag-horn hollowed out in a curious manner and with stoppers of the same material. These quaint little flasks doubtless contained the coloring matter with which the dead had painted their bodies when alive. All the objects of which we have spoken belonged to the Neolithic period; but a flat bronze necklace bead made by folding a thin slice of metal, a radius, and a bit of rib bearing green marks resulting from long contact with metal, appear to fix the date of this pit at the transition period between the Stone and Bronze ages. If this be so it is quite an exceptional case of a sepulchral pit dating from this time, for most of those known are of much later origin. Those for instance of Mont-Beuvray, Bernard (La Vendée), and Beaugency are not older than Gallo-Roman times.23According to Count Gozzadini, those of Manzabotto in Italy, which are twenty-seven in number, date from the IVth century after the foundation of Rome, and are of Etruscan origin. They are constructed with small pointed pebbles, with no trace of cement, and resemble in shape a long amphora vase, or perhaps, to be more accurate, the clapper of a bell. They are from six and a half to thirty-two and a half feet deep, with an opening varying in diameter from one foot to nearly two and a half feet.24We have said so much in preceding chapters on monuments erected in memory of the dead, that but little remains to be added here. Doubtless there are many distinctions to be noted at different times and in different countries, but everywhere the aim remains the same, and the means used for attaining that end are radically the same all the world over. Take for example the Aymaras, the most ancient race of Bolivia and Callao; they laid their dead sometimes beneath megalithic monuments (Fig. 58, p. 178) resembling the dolmens of Europe, sometimes beneath towers orchulpas, which are however probably of more recent date.Figure 105.Chulpa near Palca.Chulpas, generally of square or rectangular form, consist of a mass of unhewn stones faced outside with blocks of trachyte or basalt, painted red, yellow, or white. A very low door, always facing east, as if in honor of the rising sun, gives access to a cist in which the dead was laid. Thechulpaof our illustration (Fig. 105) is situated near the village of Palca; it rises from an excavation four feet deep; its height is about sixteen feet, and the cornice consists ofichu, a coarse grass which grows in abundance on the mountains, and which after being firmly compressed was cut with the help of sharp instruments. The human bones, which were mixed together in the greatest confusion, made a heap in the sepulchral chamber more than a foot high.The mounds of Ohio also cover over sepulchral chambers of a peculiar construction, being often formed of round pieces of wood, five to seven feet long by five to six inches in diameter; near the bodies were placed a few ornaments, chiefly copper ear-rings, shell beads, and large flint knives. Most of the skeletons lay on the bare earth; but one exception is mentioned in which the ground was paved with mussel shells. A remarkable discovery has quite recently been made at Floyd (Iowa), the account of which in Nature for January 1, 1891, we will give in the words of Clement Webster: “In making a thorough exploration of the larger mound … the remains of five human bodies were found, the bones even those of the fingers, toes, etc., being, for the most part in a good state of preservation. First, a saucer or bowl-shaped excavation has been made, extending down three and three-quarter feet below the surface of the ground around the mound, and the bottom of this macadamized with gravel and fragments of limestone. In the centre of this floor five bodies were placed in a sitting posture with the feet drawn under them, and apparently facing the north. First above the bodies was a thin layer of earth and ashes, among which were found two or three small pieces of fine-grained charcoal. Nearly all the remaining four feet of earth had been changed to a red color by the long-continued action of fire.” Mr. Webster goes on to describe the various skeletons and says of one of them, that of a woman: “The bones in their detail of structure indicated a person of low grade, the evidence of unusual muscular development being strongly marked. The skull of this personage was a wonder to behold, it equalling if not rivalling in some respects and in inferiority of grade, the famous Neanderthal skull. The forehead, if forehead it could be called, is very low, lower and more animal-like than in the Neanderthal specimen…. The question has been raised how was it that these five bodies were all buried here at the same time, their bodies being still in the flesh.” … Webster adds that the probability is that all but one of them had been sacrificed at the death of that one, who had most likely been a chief.Figure 106.Dolmen at Auvernier near the Lake of Neuchâtel.We have seen that men began by placing the bodies of their dead in caves, and only later took to burying them underground when caves were not to be had. Very often the corpse was placed between large unhewn stones to keep off from it the weight of the tumulus above. Such were the last resting-places alike of the men of Solutré and of those of Merovingian times. In the necropolis of Vilanova, which is supposed to date from times prior to the foundation of Rome, the tombs enclosed a chest, the walls of which consisted of slabs of sandstone set on edge and connected by a conglomerate of small stones. At Marzabotto, the chests are made of bricks, and placed beneath a heap of pebbles. We reproduce a chest discovered near the Lake Dwellings of Auvernier in Switzerland (Fig. 106)25and another (Fig. 107) brought to light by MM. Siret in the south of Spain. These drawings will help us better than long descriptions to form an idea of this mode of burial.Figure 107.A stone chest used as a sepulchre.In other cases the dead body was enclosed in earthenware jars. At Biskra in Algeria, two of these jars were found together; the one containing the head, the other the feet of the departed. In some instances the jar was replaced by a large clumsy earthenware basin, some six and a half feet long by three feet wide. Such basins are mentioned as having been found near Athens, but there is nothing to help us to determine their date. The ancient Iberians used one large jar only (Fig. 108) in which the dead was placed in a crouching position, still wearing his favorite ornaments. The vase was closed with a stone cover and placed in the tomb. We meet with the practice of a similar mode of interment in historic times. The Chaldeans placed their dead in earthenware vases; two jars connected at the neck serving as a coffin. Excavations in Nebuchadnezzar’s palace brought to light bodies bent nearly double and enclosed in urns not more than three feet in height by about two feet in width. On the western coast of Malabar, as far as Cape Comorin, we find near megalithic tombs large jars four feet high by three feet in diameter filled with human bones. This mode of sepulture was practised at Sfax, in the Chersonesus of Thracia, and at the foot of the hill on which Troy was built. The tumulus of Hanaï-Tepeh covered over a huge amphora in which crouched a skeleton, and the wealthy Japanese loved to know they would rest in huge artistically decorated vases, masterpieces of native pottery. If we cross the Atlantic, we meet with the same custom in Peru, Mexico, and on the shores of the Mississippi. At Teotihuacan, the bodies of children were placed head downwards in funeral urns,26and excavations in the alluvial deposits of the Mississippi yielded, among immense quantities of pottery, two huge rectangular basins glued together with clay and containing the body of a young child. It is indeed interesting to meet with the same practice in so many different places and to find the genius of many races expressing itself in the same way in so many diverse inventions, produced at times so widely separated.Figure 108.Example of burial in a jar.It is probable that early man also turned to account the trees he saw growing around him, using them as coffins for his dead. But the rapid decay of this fragile case led to its total disappearance. A few exceptions must, however, be mentioned. In 1840 some dredgers took from the bed of the Saône, at Apremont, from beneath a bed of gravel five feet thick, the trunk of a tree which still contained the bones that had been placed in it. Similar discoveries were made in the Cher, and in the celebrated cemetery of Hallstadt, near Salzburg. The cairns of Scania covered over split trunks of oak and birch trees, which had been hollowed out to receive the dead. At Gristhorpe, near Scarborough, in England, a coffin was found made of scarcely squared planks roughly put together; and another very like it was discovered at Hove, in Sussex, the latter containing a splendid amber cup, evidence of the wealth of the man who had been buried in this primitive coffin.27The ancient Caledonians sewed up their dead in the skins of oxen before burying them. The Egyptians also embalmed the ibis, the ox, the cat, the crocodile, and other animals deified by them, and the bodies of these creatures were then placed in vast subterranean chambers, where they have been discovered in the present day in great numbers. The Guanches of Teneriffe, the last representatives of the Iberians, and probably the most ancient race of Europe, took out the intestines of the corpse, dried the body in the air, painted it with a thick varnish, and finally wrapped it in the skin of a goat. This last custom was evidently a relic of the original idea of embalming, with a view to rendering the mummy as nearly as possible indestructible and, to use a happy expression of Michelet, to compel death to endure (forcer la mort de durer). Our own contemporaries are thus able to look upon the very features of those who preceded them on the earth some forty centuries ago; and but yesterday photography reproduced in every detail what was once Ramses the Great, one of the most glorious kings of history.Figure 109.Aymara mummy.Embalming was also practised in America. Recent travellers report28having seen in Upper Peru tombs of the shape of beehives, made of stones cemented with clay, each tomb containing one mummy or more in a crouching position (Figs.109and110). This custom was still practised for many centuries; Garcilasso de la Vega tells us that the dead Incas were seated in a temple at Cuzco, wearing their royal ornaments as if they were still alive; their hands were crossed upon their breasts, and their heads were bending slightly forward.29The facts enumerated above prove that burial was long practised, though it is impossible to say when it first cattle into use. About the time of the beginning of the Bronze age, or perhaps even earlier, however, a remarkable change took place in the ideas of man, and the dead instead of being buried intact were consumed by fire on the funeral pile.What can have been the origin of this custom? What race first practised it? It has long been supposed by many archæologists that it was the Aryans from the lofty Hindoo Koosh Mountains who first introduced into Europe a civilization more advanced than that which had hitherto obtained there, and taught the people to cremate instead of bury their dead. This theory was accepted for a considerable time without question, but of late years a new school, headed by Penka, has arisen who claim that the reformers came not from the East but from the North. The Marquis de Saporta had indeed before suggested that the primitive races who were the contemporaries of the mammoth and the rhinoceros came originally from the polar regions, where the remains of a luxuriant vegetation prove that climatic conditions prevailed in remote times of a very different character to those of the present day. The lignites of Iceland are made up of tulip, plantain, and nut-trees, even the vine sometimes occurring. In the ferruginous sandstones, associated with the carboniferous deposits of Spitzberg, the beech, the poplar, the magnolia, the plum tree, the sequoia, and numerous coniferous trees can be made out. The sturdy sailors who dare the regions of perpetual ice come across masses of fossilized wood in Banks, Grinnell, and Francis Joseph’s Lands, at 88° N. Lat. Among this fossil wood Heer made out the cypress, the silver pine, the poplar, the birch, and some dicotyledons with caducous leaves. These were not relics of wood which had drifted where it was found on floating ice, but of an actual local vegetation, as proved by trunks still erect in their original positions, buds, leaves, and flowers in every stage of growth, fruits in every stage of ripening. The very insects that had lived on honey from the flowers or on the leaves themselves could be identified. In those remote days, life, abundant life, similar to that now only found in the temperate countries farther south, flourished in those polar regions, so long supposed to have never been anything but lifeless deserts.Figure 110.Peruvian mummies.All this, plausible as it is, does not, however, appear to be conclusive on the point under discussion; and though we may have to abandon the idea of the Aryans having introduced cremation, we are scarcely, I think, in a position to say that races from the North were the first to practise it. I have dwelt more fully on the question of the origin of races and the evidence which language seems to give of a common source in two papers called “Les Premiers Populations de l’Europe,” which appeared in theCorrespondentfor October 1 and November 25, 1889. Whatever may be the final decision on the much contested points involved in this controversy, one thing is certain that cremation, involving though it does a complete revolution in manners and customs, spread with very great rapidity. We meet with it from Greece to Scotland and Scandinavia, from Etruria to Poland and the south of Russia, in China as in Yucatan and certain parts of Central America.In the early days of history, cremation was practised all over Europe. The Greeks attribute its inauguration to Hercules, and the funeral pile of Patrokles is described in the Iliad. The Pelasgians and the Proto-Etruscans burned their dead,30and we are told of the incineration of contemporaries of Jair, the third judge of Israel.On the other hand, the earliest inhabitants of Latium buried their dead. Visitors, who probably came by way of the valley of the Danube, introduced the new custom, and for a long tune the two rites were practised side by side. At Felsina and at Marzabotto we find instances alike of inhumation and cremation, and at Vilanova only half the tombs are those of corpses that had been cremated. In 365 of the tombs excavated in the Certosa, near Bologna, only 115 show signs of cremation having been practised. At Rome, the two rites were long both performed, probably, however, by the two distinct peoples who formed the primitive population of the town of Romulus. We know that Numa Pompilius forbade the burning of his corpse; Cicero relates that Marius was buried, and that Sulla, his fortunate rival, was the first of the Corneliagenswhose body was committed to the flames. We do not know how early cremation was introduced in Gaul; we can only say that Cæsar found it generally practised when be made his triumphal march across the country.31The celebrated excavations of Moreau prove that inhumation and incineration were both practised among the Gallo-Romans established in the eastern provinces of France. We may even assert that the two rites were practised long before the introduction of the use of metals. One thing is certain, the custom of cremation was but slowly abandoned as Christianity spread, for Charlemagne, in an edict dated 789, ordered the punishment of death for those who dared to burn dead bodies.What we have just said about historic times applies equally to more remote epochs. Thanks to the learned researches of Dr. Prunières32we are able to trace for a great length of time the modes of sepulture adopted in Lozère. The cave men of the eroded limestone districts of Les Causses took their dead to the caves in which their ancestors had been laid, and the invaders, who were probably more civilized than those they dispossessed, placed theirs beneath the dolmens which they erected in their honor. In the sepulchral caves of Rouquet and ofL’Homme Mortwe find inhumation; beneath the megalithic monuments dating from the end of the Neolithic period, we meet with the first traces of cremation, but so far of a very incomplete cremation; the action of the funeral fire had not been intense, and the bones were hard and resisted the heat. Noting beneath certain dolmens a few bones blackened by fire mixed with large quantities unaffected by it, one is inclined to think with the learned Doctor, that after practising cremation men had reverted to the old mode of burial. In the tumuli of the Bronze age, on the other hand, where the date can be determined with the aid of the ornaments and trinkets scatered about, the ustion was more complete; the bones are friable and porous, crumbling into dust when touched, and there is nothing to indicate that inhumation and cremation were both practised.It is strange indeed to find that incineration was practised from Neolithic times in the wild mountains of Lozère. There can be no doubt on the point, however, and excavations beneath the dolmen of Marconnières strikingly confirm the earlier discoveries of Dr. Prunières. Beneath a layer of broken stones and a very thin pavement, was found a mass of human bones in the greatest confusion; some still retaining their natural color, others blackened and charred by. fire. Among these bones was picked up an arrow of rock foreign to the country, three admirably polished lance-heads, and some finely cut flint-darts. The dolmen contained no metal objects, and there was no trace of metal on any of the bones.At the same period the two rites appear to have been practised simultaneously in Armorica, but there incineration was the dominant custom. In one hundred and forty-five megalithic monuments supposed to date from the Neolithic period, seventy-two give proof of incineration and twenty of inhumation only. The others yielded a few cinders, but it was impossible to come to any definite conclusion. In many cases, as we have seen, the megalithic monument was surrounded by a double or tripleenceinteof stones without mortar. Inside theseenceinteswere some small circular structures made of stones reddened by the action of heat. In the lower part of these structures were openings to admit a current of air to fan the flames. These strange structures, full of cinders and black greasy earth, bear the significant name ofRuches de Crémation.33Of thirty-nine sepulchres of the Bronze age twenty-seven gave evidence of incineration, two of inhumation, whilst ten decided nothing one way or the other.34The dolmen of Mont St.-Michel and that of Tumiac are separated by a short distance only; they were erected by the same race and probably about the same period, yet at Mont St.-Michel we find incineration, while inhumation was practised at Tumiac. How explain this difference in funeral customs? Does it imply a diversity of race, of caste, of religion, or of social position, or may it not rather be explained as being merely the result of those later displacements which upset the most careful reasoning?Whatever may have been the cause of the different modes of burial, we meet with them in every country.In Scandinavia, during the Bronze age, cremation and burial were practised in about equal proportions. Similar facts are noticed in Germany, but in the North incineration predominates, while in the West it is inhumation. Beneath the cairns of Caithness in Scotland, we find some bodies lying at full length, while others are in a bent position, and large jars of coarse pottery filled with cinders and calcined bones which had belonged to men of medium height. One of the largest of these jars is fifteen or sixteen inches high by forty-nine wide at its largest part.35In excavating the barrows of the Orkney Islands, Petrie noted the practice of both modes of burial36; but were those buried in manners so different contemporaries? This is what we are not told, and what we have to find out.At Blendowo in Poland, beneath a cromlech was found an urn filled with calcined bones, and thirty centimetres lower down a skeleton was discovered buried in the sand. Near this body was found a coin of Theodosius, and we wonder in vain whether both the individuals, whose remains are thus within a common tomb, lived at the same time. Throughout Prussia and in the Grand Duchy of Posen skeletons and jars containing human ashes are met with in the same tombs.37We must not forget to note, especially, the necropolis of Hallstadt, which was situated in the heart of the district of Bohemia occupied by the Boii. The most ancient of the tombs in these vast burial-places date from about two thousand years before the Christian era, and the Hallstadtian period, as it is sometimes called, culminated during the first half of the millennium immediately before the coming of Christ.38Nine hundred and ninety-three tombs have been excavated; all, to judge by the objects found with the human remains, belonging to the Bronze age; of these five hundred and twenty-seven contained buried bodies, and four hundred and fifty-three cremated relics.39This is a larger proportion than in the primitive necropoles of Italy.In the tombs in which burial was practised, the bodies were laid in the trench without covering, and the remains of anything in the way of slabs or coffins or protecting planks are very rare; in those tombs in which cremation had been the rule, ustion had often been very incomplete, sometimes the head and sometimes the feet having escaped the flames.Similar facts are noted at Watsch, at San Margarethen, and at Vermo in Styria, at Rovesche in Southern Carniola, and at Rosegg in the valley of the Drave. At Watsch, but ten skeletons were found, among two hundred examples of incineration. In the cremation sepulchres, if we may so call them, the cinerary urn was protected by large slabs; while in those where burial was practised, the bodies were simply confided to the earth as at Hallstadt; but by a singular contrast, the latter tombs contained much more important relics, the objects with the dead being more valuable and of finer workmanship. At Rovesche, the urn was placed in a square chest made of unhewn stones. The buried bodies lay with the head turned toward the east, an urn was placed at their feet, and their shrouds were kept in place by bronze fibulæ, while on the fingers were many rings of the same metal.Lastly, to conclude this gloomy catalogue, excavations in the mounds of Ohio and Illinois40have shown that there too cremation and inhumation are met with in sepulchres which everything tends to assign to the same race and the same period.41The sepulchral crypts of Missouri contain several skeletons which had been subjected to intense heat. The human bones were mixed with the remains of animals, fragments of charcoal, and pieces of pottery, with sortie flint weapons. In a neighboring mound excavations revealed no trace of cremation; the bodies were stretched out upon the ground, and those who discovered them picked up near them a valuable collection of flints and of carefully made pottery. There is however nothing to show whether those who buried and those who burnt their dead belonged to the same race or lived at the same time. Cremation long survived among the most savage tribes of Alaska and California, where it is still practised, and the Indians of Florida preserve the ashes of their fathers in human skulls. In California, the relations of the deceased covered their faces with a thick paste of a kind of loam mixed with the ashes of the dead, and were compelled to wear this sign of their grief until it fell off naturally.Although we meet with the burial of the dead either in a recumbent or a crouching position, everywhere the minor ceremonies connected with death are innumerable; each people, each race, indeed, having its own custom, handed down from one generation to another, and piously preserved intact by each successive family. Feasting was from the earliest times a feature of the funeral ceremonies. An edict of Charlemagne forbids eating and drinking on the tombs of the deceased, and Saint Boniface, the apostle of Germany, complains bitterly that the priests encouraged by their presence these feasts of death. We meet with the same kind of thing among the lower classes at the present day, and the cemeteries of Paris are surrounded with cafés and wine shops, where too often grief is drowned in wine. The custom of holding these feasts really comes down from the earliest inhabitants of Europe, and the savage cave man gorged himself with food upon the tombs of those belonging to him. At Aurignac, in the cave ofL’Homme Mort, in the Trou du Frontal, broken bones and fragments of charcoal bear witness to the repast. Similar traces of feasts are met with beneath the dolmens and the tumuli. From the Long Barrows have been taken the skulls and feet of bovidæ, and it is probable that the other parts of the body had been devoured by the assistants, and that the head and feet were placed in the tomb as an offering either to the dead or to the divinities who are supposed to have presided at the death. In the ancient sepulchres of Wiltshire Sir R. Colt Hoare picked up the bones of boars, stags, sheep, horses, and dogs; which he too considered were the remains of funeral feasts.Were feasts the only ceremonies connected with interments? We think not. The body was often placed in the centre of the sepulchral chamber, and around it were ranged the wives, servants, and slaves of the deceased, condemned to follow their chief into the unknown world to which he had gone. Beneath a dolmen of Algeria was found a crouching skeleton with two crania lying at his feet, which crania had doubtless belonged to victims immolated in his honor. The barrows of Great Britain preserve traces of human sacrifices, and Cæsar says in speaking of the Gauls: “Their funerals are magnificent and sumptuous. Everything supposed to have been dear to the defunct during his life was flung upon the funeral pile; even his animals were sacrificed, and until quite recently his slaves and the dependants he had loved were burnt with him.”42The facts we have been noticing prove that early man cherished hopes of immortality. All was not ended for him with death; a new life commences beyond the tomb, marked—for his ideas could go no farther—by joys similar to those he had known on earth, and events such as had occurred during his life. What else could be the meaning of the weapons, the tools of his craft, the vases filled with food placed near the defunct, the ornaments and colors intended for his adornment, the wives, slaves, and horses flung into the same tomb or consumed upon the same pile? It is pleasing to find this supreme hope among our remote ancestors; and clumsily as it was expressed, it implies a belief in a being superior to man, a protecting divinity according to some, but according to some few others a malignant and tyrannical spirit. The proofs so far to hand are not enough to justify us in seriously asserting that ancestors were worshipped by prehistoric man. But the subject is too important for us to refrain from putting before the reader such indications of this worship as have been collected, and which are necessarily connected with the moral and material condition of our remote ancestors.The radius of a mammoth was discovered at Chaleux, occupying a place of honor on a large sandstone slab near the hearth. The Chaleux Cave dates from the Reindeer period; at which time the mammoth had long since been extinct in Belgium, so that there can be no doubt that the cave man had taken this bone from the alluvial deposits of the preceding epoch, and this huge relic of an unknown creature had been the object of his veneration, a lar or protective divinity of his home. A somewhat similar fact was discovered at Laugerie-Basse and, by a strange coincidence, certain tribes of North America of the present clay preserve the bone of a mastodon or of a cetacean in their buts as a protection to their homes.From Paleolithic times men were in the habit of cutting celts or hatchets in chalk, bitumen, and other fragile substances, which were certainly of no practical use. Thousands of similar objects in harder rock, but showing no sign of wear or tear, have also been found, and there is little doubt that they all alike served as amulets. This superstitious respect for certain objects lasted for many centuries, and was handed down from one generation to another. The tombs of the Bronze and Iron ages are often found to contain flint hatchets, some of them broken intentionally, a proof, as I have already said, that they were connected with funeral rites of the nature of which we are ignorant.We also find votive hatchets beneath dolmens. By the side of some skeletons at Cissbury lay flint celts. A hatchet one and a quarter feet long was found in a Lake Station of Switzerland. It was of such friable rock that it can have been of no use but as a symbol; perhaps, indeed, it may have been a badge of office. Lastly, Merovingian tombs contain hundreds of small flint celts, the last pious offerings to the departed.43We find hatchets engraved on the megalithic monuments of Brittany, on the walls of the caves of Marne, and we meet with them again on the other side of the Atlantic, evidently bearing the same signification, implying respect for them as means of protection. De Longpérier has published a description of a Chaldean cylinder, on which was represented a priest presenting his offering to a hatchet lying on a throne, and a ring was picked up at Mykenæ, on the stone of which was engraved a double-bladed celt. We find the same idea in many different mythologies. The wordNouter(God) is translated in Egyptian hieroglyphics by a sign resembling a celt, and the hatchet of Odin is engraved on the rocks of Kivrik. On a number of Gallo-Romancippi, we find a hatchet beneath which we read the words,Dis Manibus, and lower down the dedication,Sub Ascia dedicavit. At all times and everywhere the hatchet appears as the emblem of force, and is the object of the respect of the people. The tradition of its value and importance is handed down from ancestors to descendants throughout many generations.Figure 111.Erratic block from Scania, covered with carvings.May we give a religious interpretation to the basins and cups hollowed out on rocks and erratic blocks and on the so-called Roches Moutonnées, with other monuments that have endured for many centuries (Figs.111and112)? Or must we attribute them merely to passing caprice? Their number and importance we think forbid the latter idea. We find such blocks in Switzerland, in England, France, Italy, Portugal, and on the frozen shores of the Baltic. They are no less numerous in India, and they figure in the curious pictographs of the two Americas. There is no doubt that we have here a common idea, and one it is impossible not to recognize. How. else can we account for the similarity of arrangement in the cup-shaped sculptures from the tumuli of Schleswig-Holstein and those on the Indian rocks of Kamaou, or between those of Algeria and of England?Figure 112.Engraved rock from Massibert (Lozère).In Brittany and in Scotland these cup-like sculptures are found on rocks and menhirs, on the walls of sepulchral chambers, on stones forming the sides ofkistvæns, accompanied in many instances with radiated circles, which do not, however, help us to understand them better. In Scandinavia they are known asElfen Stenavs, or elf stones, and the inhabitants come and place offerings on them for theLittle People. According to a touching tradition, these little people are souls awaiting the time of their being clothed once more in human flesh. In Belgium these strangely decorated stones are attributed to theNutons, dwarfs who are very helpful to mortals. In every country there is some legend sacred to the sculptured stones.Such are the only facts we have been able to collect respecting the religious feeling of prehistoric races. They are not sufficient to authorize any final conclusion on the subject. At every turn we are compelled to admit our helplessness. But yesterday this past without a limit was absolutely unknown to us, and to-day we are but beginning to be able to obtain a glimpse into its secrets. We have been the laborers of the first hour, it will be for those who come after us to complete the task we have been able but to begin. May a genuine love of truth be to them, as we may justly claim it has been to us, the only guide.1The true name of this cave is theBetche aux Roches. A very excellent essay on the subject was read by the explorers, MM. de Puydt and Lohest, in August, 1886, to the Historic Society of Belgium, and “Les Fouilles de Spy,” by Dr. Collignon, published in theRevue d’Anthropologie, 1887, may also be consulted. Excavations were also carried on in the same cave in 1879 by M. Bucquoy (Bul. Soc. Anth. de Belgique, 1887). He distinguished five ossiferous levels and picked up some flints of the Moustérien type, and even some Chelléen hatchets, to which he gave the name of coupsde poing.—Fraipont and Lohest; “Recherches sur les Ossements Humains Decouvertes dans les Dépôts Quaternaires d’un grotte à Spy.”2We borrow these details from a valuable work by Cartailhac (Mal., 1886, p. 441;Rev. d’Anth., 1886, p. 448). The conclusions of our learned colleague are that we really know nothing of the funeral rites of the men of Chelles and Moustier, and that it is to the Solutréen period that we must assign the first really authenticated tombs. Cartailhac’s admirable book, “La France Préhistorique,” p. 302, should also be consulted.3“Ipui Antichi Sepolcri dell Italia.”4Archæological Journal, vol. xxii.5Matériaux, 1885, p. 299.6This dolmen was carefully excavated by MM. Hahn and Millescamps,Bul. Soc. Anth., 1883, p. 312.7Rivière;Congrès des Sciences Géographiques, Paris, 1878.8Atti della R. Acad. dei Lincei, 1879–1880. Pigorini:Bul. de Pal. Italiana, 1880, p. 33.9Soc. Anth. de Munich, 1886.10Soc. Anth. de Lyon, 1889.11“Histoire du Travail en Gaule,” p. 24.12Troyon: “De l’ Attitude Repliée dans la Sépulture Antique,”Revue Arch., 1864.13Matériaux, 1875, p. 327.14A. Nicaise:Matériaux, 1880, p. 186.15Arch. Préhistorique, p. 178.16Congrès Préhistorique de Bruxelles, p. 299.17Bul. Soc. Anth., 1876, p. 191. Grad:Nature, 1877, 1st week, p. 314.18Memorie sulle scoperte paleoethnologiche della campagna romana. Pigorini adds in his turn: “I cadaveri erano abitualmente adagiati sul fianco sinistro, col cranio appogiato sulla mano sinistre e le ginocchia alquanto piegate in guisa che tavolta si trovarono le tibie assai prossime alla cassa toracica.”19Pallery: “Mon. Mégalithiques de Mascara,”Bul. Soc. Ethn., 1887.20Bancroft: “The Native Races of the Pacific,” vol. i., pp. 365, etc. Moreno: “Les Paraderos de la Patagonie,”Rev. d’Anth., 1874.21“Nécropole de Colonna, prov. de Grosseto,”R. Acad. dei Lincei, Roma, 1885.22Bul. Soc. Anth., 1880, p. 895.23Abbé Baudry et Ballereau: “Les Puits Funéraires du Bernard,” La Roche-sur-Yon, 1873.24“Renseignements sur une Ancienne Nécropole Manzabotta, près de Bologna,” Bologna, 1871.25Gross: “Les Proto-Helvètes.” Morel-Fatio: “Sépultures des Populations Lacustres de Chamblandes.” As at Auvernier, a great many bears’ tusks were found lying near the dead, which may possibly also have had something to do with a funeral rite.26D. Charnay:North American Review, January, 1881.27Stuart: “The Early Modes of Burial.”28Vidal Seneze;Bul. Soc. Anth., 1877, p. 561.29“Histoire des Incas,” Paris, 1744, chap. xviii.30Conestabile: “De l’incinération chez les Etrusques.”31A. Bertrand: “Arch. Celtique et Gauloise,” Introduction.32Ass. française, Nantes, 1875; Havre, 1877.33Luco: “Exposition de Trois Monuments Quadrilatères par feu James Miln,” Vannes, 1883.34P. du Chatellier: “Mém. Soc. d’Emulation des Côtes-du-Nord,” Saint Brieuc, 1883.35Proceedings Soc. Anth. of Scotland, January 11, 1886.36“On the Ancient Modes of Sepulchre in the Orkneys” (British Association, 1877).37Kohn and Mehlis: “Zür Vorgeschichte des Menschen im Ostlichen Europa,” Iéna, 1879.38Hochstetter: “Die neueste Graber Funde von Watsch. und S. Margarethen und der Kultur Kreiss der Hallstadter Period,” Wien, 1883. Siebenter: “Bericht der Prehistorischen Commission,” Wien, 1884.39In these tombs were found 61 gold objects, 5,574 bronze, 593 iron, 270 amber, 73 glass, and 1,813 terra-cotta. A. Bertrand:Rev. d’Ethnographie, 1883.40Smithsonian Report, 1881.41Putnam, xii. andxx. Reports of the Peabody Museum.42“De Bello Gallico,” book vi., cap. xix. Consult also Pomponius Mela: “De Situ Orbis,” book iii., cap. ii.43In his fruitful excavations of Gallic, Gallo-Roman, and Merovingian tombs, Moreau collected no less than 31,515 flint celts or hatchets, which had evidently been votive offerings. See Album de Caranda: “Fouilles de Sainte Restitute, de Trugny, d’Armentière, d’Arcy, de Brenny,” etc.WORKS BY MARQUIS DE NADAILLAC.Prehistoric America. By the Marquis de Nadaillac. Translated, with the permission of the Author, by Nancy Bell (N. D’Anvers), author of “History of Art.” Edited, with notes, by W. H. Dall. Popular edition. $2 25CHIEF CONTENTS.—Man and the Mastodon—The Kjokkenmöddings and Cave Relics—Mound-Builders—Pottery Weapons and Ornaments of the Mound-Builders—Cliff-Dwellers and Inhabitants of the Pueblos—People of Central America—Central American Ruins—Peru—Early Race—Origin of the American Aborigines, etc., etc.“The best book on this subject that has yet been published, … for the reason that, as a record of facts, it is unusually full, and because it is the first comprehensive work in which, discarding all the old and worn-out nostrums about the existence on this continent of an extinct civilization, we are brought face to face with conclusions that are based upon a careful comparison of architectural and other prehistoric remains with the arts and industries, the manners and customs, of “the only people, except the whites, who, so far as we know, have ever held the regions in which these remains are found.”—Nation.The Customs and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples. By the Marquis de Nadaillac. Translated, with the permission of the Author, by Nancy Bell (N. D’Anvers). Fully illustrated. 8vo. $3 00CHIEF CONTENTS.—The Stone Age, its Duration, and its Place in Time—Food, Cannibalism, Mammals, Fish, Hunting and Fishing, Navigation—Weapons, Tools, Pottery; Origin of the Use of Fire, Clothing, Ornaments; Early Artistic Efforts—Caves, Kitchen-Middings, Lake Stations, “Terremares,” Crannoges, Burghs, “Nurhags,” “Talayoti,” and “Truddhi”—Megalithic Monuments—Industry, Commerce, Social Organization; Fights, Wounds and Trepanation—Camps, Fortifications, Vitrified Forts; Santorin; the Towns upon the Hill of Hissarlik—Tombs—Index.G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS, PUBLISHERS,NEW YORK AND LONDON.
The true history of man will be found in his tombs, says Thucydides; and as a matter of fact the sepulchre has ever occupied much of the thoughts of man, the result of a religious sentiment, a conviction that all does not end with the life which so quickly passes by.
From the very earliest times we meet with tokens of the hopes and fears connected with a future existence; but, as I have already stated, the human bones that can with certainty be said to date from Palæolithic times are very rare. We know but very few facts justifying us in asserting that the contemporary of the mammoth and of the cave bear had already learnt to respect the remains of what had once been a man like himself. One of these few facts deserves, I think, to be noticed with some detail.
In 1886, excavations in the cave of Spy1(Namur), or rather in a terrace some thirty-six feet long by nineteen and a half wide giving access to it, brought to light two human skeletons. One was that of an individual already advanced in life, probably of the feminine sex, the other of a man in the prime of life. These skeletons were imbedded in a very hard breccia containing also fragments of ivory and numerous flints of very small size. Some of them had very fine scratches on both sides. From what I could learn on the spot, the skeletons when found were in a recumbent position. The bones, few of which were missing, were still in their natural position, and near to one of them were picked up several arrow- or lance-heads, one of which, of phtanite, some two and a half inches long, was of the purest Moustérien type. The bones were those of short, squat individuals, and the skulls were of the type of the Canstadt race, the most ancient of which anything is known; the thickness of the crania was about one third of an inch. The forehead, is low and retreating, the eyebrows are prominent, and the lower jaws strong and well developed.
At the same level and in that immediately above it were picked up the remains of the mammoth, theRhinoceros tichorhinus, the cave bear, and the large cave hyena, the reindeer, and numerous other mammals belonging to the Quaternary fauna. Everything points to the conclusion that the man and woman whose remains have so opportunely come to light were contemporary with these animals, and that their bodies were placed after death in the cave in which they were found.
Belgium has furnished numerous examples of sepulchral caves, of a date, however, less ancient than that we have been considering. Recent excavations in the Chauvaux Cave revealed two skeletons leaning against the walls in a crouching position, the legs tucked under the body. In the Gendron Cave M. Dupont discovered seventeen skeletons lying in a low, narrow passage, stretched out at full length with the feet toward the wall, and arranged in twos and threes, one above the other. In the middle of all these dead was the skeleton of one man placed upright, as if to watch over the other bodies.
The Duruthy Cave at Sordes opens near the point of junction of the waters of the Pan and Oloron, whence their united waters flow into the Adour. At the northern extremity of this cave is a natural niche in which lay more than thirty skeletons, some of men, some of women, and some of children, mixed together in the greatest confusion. Worked flints, bone stilettos, and ornaments lay around, all of the forms characteristic of Palæolithic times.
It would seem that we have here evidence of the practice of a funeral rite, which consisted in first stripping the bodies of flesh, and then laying the bones in caves, where they were often left unnoticed by the living occupants of the same refuge.2
The caves of Baoussé-Roussé, near Mentone, give fresh proof of the extension of this rite, if we may so call it. The skeletons lay upon a bed of powdered iron ore, in some cases as much as two fifths of an inch thick, and this accumulation could not have taken place if the skeleton had not been deprived of its flesh before inhumation. The flesh must have been taken off by some rapid process, for the bones remain, as a general rule, in their natural positions, united by their tendons and ligaments. In Italy, says Issel, the cave men buried their dead in the caves they lived in, a thin layer of earth alone separating them from the living; the bodies, adds Pigorini,3generally lay on the left side, the head rested on the left hand, and the knees were bent. Beside the skeleton was placed a vase containing red chalk, to be used for painting the body in the new world it was supposed to be about to enter.
We could quote similar discoveries in Sicily, Belgium, and the southern Pyrenees. Beneath the tumulus of Plouhennec, in Brittany, bones were strewn about in the greatest disorder. Some archæologists are of opinion that the openings in certain dolmens were used for throwing in the bones of the dead who successively went to join their ancestors. In many of the Long Barrows of England the bones appear to have been flung in pell-mell; the space was too narrow to hold the complete body, so that before inhumation the flesh must have been separated from the bones. In no other way can we explain the confusion in which the human remains lay when they were discovered.4Pigorini thinks this is a proof that primitive races worshipped their dead, and held their bodies in veneration.5Perhaps they even carried them about in their migrations. However that may be, the custom of separating the flesh from the bones was continued until cremation became general. This would explain the huge ossuaries found in regions so widely separated.
Although, however, the mode of sepulture we have just described was practised for a long time in certain places, we cannot admit it to have been general. In certain megalithic tombs we find dispositions similar to those described in speaking of the Gendron Cave. Excavations beneath the Port-Blanc dolmen (Morbihan) brought to light a rough pavement on which lay numbers of skeletons, closely packed one against another, which skeletons were probably those of men who had been held in honor, and to commemorate whom the dolmen was set up. Separated from them by a layer of stones and earth rested another series of skeletons, not so closely packed as the first. The new-comers had respected their predecessors, and no one had violated the sanctuary of the dead. Similar facts were noted at Grand Compans, near Luzarches,6and it is evident that successive inhumations beneath dolmens often took place, and instances might, if necessary, be multiplied.
Another singular funeral rite was practised in remote antiquity. Many of the bones found in the various caves of Mentone were colored with red hematite.7As this was only the case with the bones of adults, those of children retaining their natural whiteness, it evidently had some special significance. In 1880, the opening of a cave of the Stone age in the district of Anagni, a short distance from Rome, brought to light the facial portion of a human cranium, colored bright red with cinnabar. Nor are these by any means exceptional cases, for similar coloration was noticed on bones picked up at Finalmarina and several other places in Liguria and Sicily. The custom had therefore become general in the Neolithic period in the whole of the Italian peninsula.8We also meet with it in other countries; at the Prehistoric Congress, when in session at Lisbon, Dolgado added to what was said about the discoveries in Italy the fact that the cave men of Furninha practised a similar rite. In thekurganesof the department of Kiev crania were found colored with a mineral substance, fragments of which were strewn about near the skeletons. The most ancient of thekurganesappear to date from the Stone age, for in them were found implements made of flint and reindeer-horn, mixed with the bones of rodents9long since extinct in that district. A similar practice is met with in the tombs of Poland, many bones being covered with a coating of red color, in some instances one fifth of an inch thick. Excavations in the Kitor valley (province of Irkutsk, Siberia have brought to light several tombs which appear to date from the sauce period as thekurganesof Kiew. The dead were buried with the weapons and ornaments they would like to use in the new life which had begun for them. The tomb was then filled in with sand, with which care was taken to mix plenty of red ochre. It is difficult not to conclude that this was a relic of a rite fallen into desuetude.
At the present day certain tribes of North America expose their dead on the tops of trees, and before burying the bones, when stripped of their flesh, cover them with a coating of a bright red color. In the island of Espiritu Santo many human bones have also been picked up painted with an oxide of argillaceous iron. These customs, strange as they may appear, were evidently practised in honor of ancestors; atavism is as clearly shown in customs and traditions as in physical structure.
At Solutré is a sepulchre formed of unhewn slabs of stone. The body of the dead rested on a thick bed of the broken and crushed bones of horses. The remains of reindeer were mixed with the human bones. Were these too relics of funeral rites, and were the animal bones those of the horses and reindeer that had belonged to their hunter? It is impossible to say. Solutré, situated as it was on an admirable site on a hill overlooking the valley of the Seine, protected from the north winds and close to a plentiful stream, has also been a favorite resort of man. In the tombs all ages are mixed together, and if some do indeed date from Neolithic times, others are Roman, Burgundian, Merovingian. There may be among them a certain number dating from the Reindeer period; that is about all we can assert with any certainty in the present state of our knowledge. The Abbé Ducrost, however, in an important essay10asserts that he has found incontrovertible proofs of the interment of Solutréens on the hearths of their homes in Palæolithic times. If this be so, the custom is one of frequent occurrence, and has been continued for centuries; for De Colanges, in his fine work on ancient cities, shows that at Rome the earliest tombs were on the hearth itself of the dwelling. De Mortillet, on the other hand, dwells very earnestly on the mode of inhumation at Solutré, and sees in the juxtaposition of human remains and thedébrisof hearths but the result of displacement, and of the regular turning upside down of which the hill of Solutré has been the scene. To this Reinach replied, to the effect that, whereas a few years ago De Mortillet’s authority led many archæologists to suppose that the men of the Reindeer period did not bury their dead, facts, ever more important than theories, have now proved beyond a doubt that this very decided opinion is a mistake. Not only did the men of remote antiquity bury their dead; they laid them, as at Solutré, on the hearths near which they had lived.11
The dead were often buried seated or bent forward, and it is interesting to note the same custom beneath the mounds of America and the tumuli of Europe. It is touching to see how in death men wished to recall their life on earth; the cradle was, so to speak, reproduced in the tomb, and man lay on the bosom of earth, the common mother of humanity, like the child on the bosom of his own mother. Perhaps, too, the seated position was meant to indicate that man, who had never known rest during his hard struggle for existence, had found it at last in his new life. The men of the rough and barbarous times of the remote past were unable to conceive the idea of a future different to the present, or of a life which was not in every respect the same as that on earth had been.
Whatever may have been the motive, this mode of burial was practised from the Madeleine period.12At Bruniquel, in Aveyron, the dead were found crouching in their last home. This position is, however, peculiarly characteristic of Neolithic times, and is met with throughout Europe. Eight skeletons were recently discovered bending forward in the sepulchral cave of Schwann (Mecklenburg). In Scandinavia there are so many similar cases that it is difficult to make a selection. Tit the sepulchral cave of Oxevalla (East Gothland) the dead are all in crouching attitudes, and tumuli dating from the most remote antiquity cover over a passage, formed of immense blocks of stone, leading to a central chamber, in which are numerous seated skeletons resting against the walls.
On the shores of the Mediterranean, excavations of the Vence Cave (Alpes-Maritimes) brought to light a number of dead arranged in a circle as if about to take a meal in common. The bodies were crouching in the position of men sitting on their heels; the spinal column was bent forward and the head nearly touched the knees. In the centre of this strange group were noticed some fragments of pottery and the remains of a large bird, a buzzard probably. Perhaps its death among the corpses was a mere accident.13The dolmens of Aveyron yielded some flint-flakes and arrow-heads, pieces of pottery, pendants, and bone, stone, shell, and slate-colored schist beads. Beneath one of these dolmens was found one small bronze object, quite an exceptional instance of the occurrence of that metal. The skeletons rested against the walls. In one of the tombs some human bones, which bad been originally placed at the entrance to the cave, had been moved to the back; the vanquished had here, as in life, to give way before the conquerors. Excavations in the Mané-Lud tomb have led explorers to suppose that here too the corpses were buried in a crouching position. It is the same at Luzarches and in the Varennes cemetery near Dormans.14In the last named were found traces of a fire that had been lit above the tomb, and some pottery was picked up ornamented with hollow lines, filled with some white matter not unlike barbotine. M. de Baye says this mode of interment is confined to the district of Marne; but for all that he himself gives an example of its practice elsewhere.15
In the prehistoric tombs discovered at Cape Blanc-Nez, near Escalles (Pas-de-Calais), the position in which the body had been interred could be made out in four instances. The ends of the tibiæ, humeri, and .radii were united, the bones of the hands were found near the clavicles, so that the bodies had evidently been bending forward with the arms crossed and the fingers pointing toward the shoulders.16Similar facts are quoted from a cave at Equehen on the plateau which stretches along the seashore on the east of Boulogne. The bodies, to the number of nine, were crouching with the face turned toward the entrance of the cave, which was closed with great blocks of sandstone. Two polished stone hatchets, broken doubtless in accordance with some sepulchral rite, had been placed near the skeletons.
Numerous human bones were found in the Cravanche Cave near Belfort, which probably dates from the close of the Neolithic period, judging from the total absence of metal and the shape of the flint and bone implements picked up. Here too the bodies were bent almost double, the head drooping forward and the knees drawn up nearly to the chin. Several of these skeletons were completely imbedded in the stalagmite which had formed in the cave, the head and knees alone emerging from the solid mass. The position in which they were originally placed had thus of necessity been maintained.17
A similar rite, for rite we must call this mode of burial, was practised in Italy, and the Chevalier de Rossi speaks of a tomb of the Neolithic period at Cantalupo, near Rome, in which one of the bodies wag placed in the crouching attitude, which he says is familiar to all who have studied ancient tombs.18This practice was still continued in protohistoric times; Schliemann noticed it in the excavations he superintended at Mykenæ, and Homer says that amongst the Lybians the dead were buried seated.
The necropolis near Constantine contains numerous megalithic monuments. These are either round or square cromlechs surrounding sarcophagi, or circularenceintes, in which the dead were laid in a trench. In the former there are always a great many funeral objects in the tomb, and the body of the dead is in a crouching posture; in the latter there are few things beside the corpse itself, and that is in a recumbent position. Do these peculiarities denote different races? Do the tombs all date from the same period, or are these arrangements but fresh indications of the difference everywhere maintained between social classes? It is difficult to decide, and we must be content with enumerating facts. We may add, however, that the crouching position of corpses is constantly met with in Africa19and in North and South America, from Canada to Patagonia.20
The funeral rites of which we have spoken necessarily imply burial; man did not abandon to wild beasts or birds of prey the bodies of those who had once been like himself. At Aurignac, at Bruniquel, and in the Frontal Cave, the cave man bad taken the precaution of closing with the largest stones he could find the entrances to the last resting-places of those belonging to him. The caves ofL’Homme Mort, and of Petit-Morin which date from Neolithic times, retain traces of similar blocking up. There were five entrances to the cave of Garenne de Verneuil (Marne) in which was a regular ossuary; the floor was paved and the roof kept up with eleven upright stones. The objects in the tomb with the dead were a clumsy earthenware vase, a few flint knives, and some shell necklace beads.
The sides of the almost inaccessible mountains of Peru are pierced, at a height of several hundred feet, with numerous caves which have nearly all been artificially enlarged. It was in them that the Peruvians placed their dead, and the people of the country still call themTantama Marcaor abodes of desolation. The entrances were concealed with extreme care, but this care did not save the tombs from violation; the greed for the treasures supposed to be concealed in the tombs was too great for respect to the unknown dead to hold curiosity in check.
In other cases, the dead was laid near the hearth which had been that of his home when living, and his abode during life became his tomb. The dolmens,cella, andGangrabenin Germany, and the barrows in England, appear to bear witness to the prevalence of a similar custom in those countries; and we find the same idea perpetuated even when cremation became general. At Alba, in Latium, at Marino, near Albano, at Vetulonia and Corneto-Tarquinia were discovered urns with doors, windows, and a roof imitating human dwellings.21
Later, other modes of sepulture came into use. In Marne M. Nicaise made out seven funeral pits22resembling in shape, he tells us, long-necked bottles with flat bottoms. One of these pits at Tours-sur-Marne contained at least forty skeletons, and among the bones were found thirty-four polished stone hatchets, fifty knives, two flint lance-heads and a great many arrows with transverse edges, a necklace of little round bits of limestone, several fragments of coarse pottery which had been mixed with grains of silica and baked in the fire, and lastly three little flasks made of stag-horn hollowed out in a curious manner and with stoppers of the same material. These quaint little flasks doubtless contained the coloring matter with which the dead had painted their bodies when alive. All the objects of which we have spoken belonged to the Neolithic period; but a flat bronze necklace bead made by folding a thin slice of metal, a radius, and a bit of rib bearing green marks resulting from long contact with metal, appear to fix the date of this pit at the transition period between the Stone and Bronze ages. If this be so it is quite an exceptional case of a sepulchral pit dating from this time, for most of those known are of much later origin. Those for instance of Mont-Beuvray, Bernard (La Vendée), and Beaugency are not older than Gallo-Roman times.23According to Count Gozzadini, those of Manzabotto in Italy, which are twenty-seven in number, date from the IVth century after the foundation of Rome, and are of Etruscan origin. They are constructed with small pointed pebbles, with no trace of cement, and resemble in shape a long amphora vase, or perhaps, to be more accurate, the clapper of a bell. They are from six and a half to thirty-two and a half feet deep, with an opening varying in diameter from one foot to nearly two and a half feet.24
We have said so much in preceding chapters on monuments erected in memory of the dead, that but little remains to be added here. Doubtless there are many distinctions to be noted at different times and in different countries, but everywhere the aim remains the same, and the means used for attaining that end are radically the same all the world over. Take for example the Aymaras, the most ancient race of Bolivia and Callao; they laid their dead sometimes beneath megalithic monuments (Fig. 58, p. 178) resembling the dolmens of Europe, sometimes beneath towers orchulpas, which are however probably of more recent date.
Chulpa near Palca.
Chulpas, generally of square or rectangular form, consist of a mass of unhewn stones faced outside with blocks of trachyte or basalt, painted red, yellow, or white. A very low door, always facing east, as if in honor of the rising sun, gives access to a cist in which the dead was laid. Thechulpaof our illustration (Fig. 105) is situated near the village of Palca; it rises from an excavation four feet deep; its height is about sixteen feet, and the cornice consists ofichu, a coarse grass which grows in abundance on the mountains, and which after being firmly compressed was cut with the help of sharp instruments. The human bones, which were mixed together in the greatest confusion, made a heap in the sepulchral chamber more than a foot high.
The mounds of Ohio also cover over sepulchral chambers of a peculiar construction, being often formed of round pieces of wood, five to seven feet long by five to six inches in diameter; near the bodies were placed a few ornaments, chiefly copper ear-rings, shell beads, and large flint knives. Most of the skeletons lay on the bare earth; but one exception is mentioned in which the ground was paved with mussel shells. A remarkable discovery has quite recently been made at Floyd (Iowa), the account of which in Nature for January 1, 1891, we will give in the words of Clement Webster: “In making a thorough exploration of the larger mound … the remains of five human bodies were found, the bones even those of the fingers, toes, etc., being, for the most part in a good state of preservation. First, a saucer or bowl-shaped excavation has been made, extending down three and three-quarter feet below the surface of the ground around the mound, and the bottom of this macadamized with gravel and fragments of limestone. In the centre of this floor five bodies were placed in a sitting posture with the feet drawn under them, and apparently facing the north. First above the bodies was a thin layer of earth and ashes, among which were found two or three small pieces of fine-grained charcoal. Nearly all the remaining four feet of earth had been changed to a red color by the long-continued action of fire.” Mr. Webster goes on to describe the various skeletons and says of one of them, that of a woman: “The bones in their detail of structure indicated a person of low grade, the evidence of unusual muscular development being strongly marked. The skull of this personage was a wonder to behold, it equalling if not rivalling in some respects and in inferiority of grade, the famous Neanderthal skull. The forehead, if forehead it could be called, is very low, lower and more animal-like than in the Neanderthal specimen…. The question has been raised how was it that these five bodies were all buried here at the same time, their bodies being still in the flesh.” … Webster adds that the probability is that all but one of them had been sacrificed at the death of that one, who had most likely been a chief.
Dolmen at Auvernier near the Lake of Neuchâtel.
We have seen that men began by placing the bodies of their dead in caves, and only later took to burying them underground when caves were not to be had. Very often the corpse was placed between large unhewn stones to keep off from it the weight of the tumulus above. Such were the last resting-places alike of the men of Solutré and of those of Merovingian times. In the necropolis of Vilanova, which is supposed to date from times prior to the foundation of Rome, the tombs enclosed a chest, the walls of which consisted of slabs of sandstone set on edge and connected by a conglomerate of small stones. At Marzabotto, the chests are made of bricks, and placed beneath a heap of pebbles. We reproduce a chest discovered near the Lake Dwellings of Auvernier in Switzerland (Fig. 106)25and another (Fig. 107) brought to light by MM. Siret in the south of Spain. These drawings will help us better than long descriptions to form an idea of this mode of burial.
A stone chest used as a sepulchre.
In other cases the dead body was enclosed in earthenware jars. At Biskra in Algeria, two of these jars were found together; the one containing the head, the other the feet of the departed. In some instances the jar was replaced by a large clumsy earthenware basin, some six and a half feet long by three feet wide. Such basins are mentioned as having been found near Athens, but there is nothing to help us to determine their date. The ancient Iberians used one large jar only (Fig. 108) in which the dead was placed in a crouching position, still wearing his favorite ornaments. The vase was closed with a stone cover and placed in the tomb. We meet with the practice of a similar mode of interment in historic times. The Chaldeans placed their dead in earthenware vases; two jars connected at the neck serving as a coffin. Excavations in Nebuchadnezzar’s palace brought to light bodies bent nearly double and enclosed in urns not more than three feet in height by about two feet in width. On the western coast of Malabar, as far as Cape Comorin, we find near megalithic tombs large jars four feet high by three feet in diameter filled with human bones. This mode of sepulture was practised at Sfax, in the Chersonesus of Thracia, and at the foot of the hill on which Troy was built. The tumulus of Hanaï-Tepeh covered over a huge amphora in which crouched a skeleton, and the wealthy Japanese loved to know they would rest in huge artistically decorated vases, masterpieces of native pottery. If we cross the Atlantic, we meet with the same custom in Peru, Mexico, and on the shores of the Mississippi. At Teotihuacan, the bodies of children were placed head downwards in funeral urns,26and excavations in the alluvial deposits of the Mississippi yielded, among immense quantities of pottery, two huge rectangular basins glued together with clay and containing the body of a young child. It is indeed interesting to meet with the same practice in so many different places and to find the genius of many races expressing itself in the same way in so many diverse inventions, produced at times so widely separated.
Example of burial in a jar.
It is probable that early man also turned to account the trees he saw growing around him, using them as coffins for his dead. But the rapid decay of this fragile case led to its total disappearance. A few exceptions must, however, be mentioned. In 1840 some dredgers took from the bed of the Saône, at Apremont, from beneath a bed of gravel five feet thick, the trunk of a tree which still contained the bones that had been placed in it. Similar discoveries were made in the Cher, and in the celebrated cemetery of Hallstadt, near Salzburg. The cairns of Scania covered over split trunks of oak and birch trees, which had been hollowed out to receive the dead. At Gristhorpe, near Scarborough, in England, a coffin was found made of scarcely squared planks roughly put together; and another very like it was discovered at Hove, in Sussex, the latter containing a splendid amber cup, evidence of the wealth of the man who had been buried in this primitive coffin.27
The ancient Caledonians sewed up their dead in the skins of oxen before burying them. The Egyptians also embalmed the ibis, the ox, the cat, the crocodile, and other animals deified by them, and the bodies of these creatures were then placed in vast subterranean chambers, where they have been discovered in the present day in great numbers. The Guanches of Teneriffe, the last representatives of the Iberians, and probably the most ancient race of Europe, took out the intestines of the corpse, dried the body in the air, painted it with a thick varnish, and finally wrapped it in the skin of a goat. This last custom was evidently a relic of the original idea of embalming, with a view to rendering the mummy as nearly as possible indestructible and, to use a happy expression of Michelet, to compel death to endure (forcer la mort de durer). Our own contemporaries are thus able to look upon the very features of those who preceded them on the earth some forty centuries ago; and but yesterday photography reproduced in every detail what was once Ramses the Great, one of the most glorious kings of history.
Aymara mummy.
Embalming was also practised in America. Recent travellers report28having seen in Upper Peru tombs of the shape of beehives, made of stones cemented with clay, each tomb containing one mummy or more in a crouching position (Figs.109and110). This custom was still practised for many centuries; Garcilasso de la Vega tells us that the dead Incas were seated in a temple at Cuzco, wearing their royal ornaments as if they were still alive; their hands were crossed upon their breasts, and their heads were bending slightly forward.29
The facts enumerated above prove that burial was long practised, though it is impossible to say when it first cattle into use. About the time of the beginning of the Bronze age, or perhaps even earlier, however, a remarkable change took place in the ideas of man, and the dead instead of being buried intact were consumed by fire on the funeral pile.
What can have been the origin of this custom? What race first practised it? It has long been supposed by many archæologists that it was the Aryans from the lofty Hindoo Koosh Mountains who first introduced into Europe a civilization more advanced than that which had hitherto obtained there, and taught the people to cremate instead of bury their dead. This theory was accepted for a considerable time without question, but of late years a new school, headed by Penka, has arisen who claim that the reformers came not from the East but from the North. The Marquis de Saporta had indeed before suggested that the primitive races who were the contemporaries of the mammoth and the rhinoceros came originally from the polar regions, where the remains of a luxuriant vegetation prove that climatic conditions prevailed in remote times of a very different character to those of the present day. The lignites of Iceland are made up of tulip, plantain, and nut-trees, even the vine sometimes occurring. In the ferruginous sandstones, associated with the carboniferous deposits of Spitzberg, the beech, the poplar, the magnolia, the plum tree, the sequoia, and numerous coniferous trees can be made out. The sturdy sailors who dare the regions of perpetual ice come across masses of fossilized wood in Banks, Grinnell, and Francis Joseph’s Lands, at 88° N. Lat. Among this fossil wood Heer made out the cypress, the silver pine, the poplar, the birch, and some dicotyledons with caducous leaves. These were not relics of wood which had drifted where it was found on floating ice, but of an actual local vegetation, as proved by trunks still erect in their original positions, buds, leaves, and flowers in every stage of growth, fruits in every stage of ripening. The very insects that had lived on honey from the flowers or on the leaves themselves could be identified. In those remote days, life, abundant life, similar to that now only found in the temperate countries farther south, flourished in those polar regions, so long supposed to have never been anything but lifeless deserts.
Peruvian mummies.
All this, plausible as it is, does not, however, appear to be conclusive on the point under discussion; and though we may have to abandon the idea of the Aryans having introduced cremation, we are scarcely, I think, in a position to say that races from the North were the first to practise it. I have dwelt more fully on the question of the origin of races and the evidence which language seems to give of a common source in two papers called “Les Premiers Populations de l’Europe,” which appeared in theCorrespondentfor October 1 and November 25, 1889. Whatever may be the final decision on the much contested points involved in this controversy, one thing is certain that cremation, involving though it does a complete revolution in manners and customs, spread with very great rapidity. We meet with it from Greece to Scotland and Scandinavia, from Etruria to Poland and the south of Russia, in China as in Yucatan and certain parts of Central America.
In the early days of history, cremation was practised all over Europe. The Greeks attribute its inauguration to Hercules, and the funeral pile of Patrokles is described in the Iliad. The Pelasgians and the Proto-Etruscans burned their dead,30and we are told of the incineration of contemporaries of Jair, the third judge of Israel.
On the other hand, the earliest inhabitants of Latium buried their dead. Visitors, who probably came by way of the valley of the Danube, introduced the new custom, and for a long tune the two rites were practised side by side. At Felsina and at Marzabotto we find instances alike of inhumation and cremation, and at Vilanova only half the tombs are those of corpses that had been cremated. In 365 of the tombs excavated in the Certosa, near Bologna, only 115 show signs of cremation having been practised. At Rome, the two rites were long both performed, probably, however, by the two distinct peoples who formed the primitive population of the town of Romulus. We know that Numa Pompilius forbade the burning of his corpse; Cicero relates that Marius was buried, and that Sulla, his fortunate rival, was the first of the Corneliagenswhose body was committed to the flames. We do not know how early cremation was introduced in Gaul; we can only say that Cæsar found it generally practised when be made his triumphal march across the country.31The celebrated excavations of Moreau prove that inhumation and incineration were both practised among the Gallo-Romans established in the eastern provinces of France. We may even assert that the two rites were practised long before the introduction of the use of metals. One thing is certain, the custom of cremation was but slowly abandoned as Christianity spread, for Charlemagne, in an edict dated 789, ordered the punishment of death for those who dared to burn dead bodies.
What we have just said about historic times applies equally to more remote epochs. Thanks to the learned researches of Dr. Prunières32we are able to trace for a great length of time the modes of sepulture adopted in Lozère. The cave men of the eroded limestone districts of Les Causses took their dead to the caves in which their ancestors had been laid, and the invaders, who were probably more civilized than those they dispossessed, placed theirs beneath the dolmens which they erected in their honor. In the sepulchral caves of Rouquet and ofL’Homme Mortwe find inhumation; beneath the megalithic monuments dating from the end of the Neolithic period, we meet with the first traces of cremation, but so far of a very incomplete cremation; the action of the funeral fire had not been intense, and the bones were hard and resisted the heat. Noting beneath certain dolmens a few bones blackened by fire mixed with large quantities unaffected by it, one is inclined to think with the learned Doctor, that after practising cremation men had reverted to the old mode of burial. In the tumuli of the Bronze age, on the other hand, where the date can be determined with the aid of the ornaments and trinkets scatered about, the ustion was more complete; the bones are friable and porous, crumbling into dust when touched, and there is nothing to indicate that inhumation and cremation were both practised.
It is strange indeed to find that incineration was practised from Neolithic times in the wild mountains of Lozère. There can be no doubt on the point, however, and excavations beneath the dolmen of Marconnières strikingly confirm the earlier discoveries of Dr. Prunières. Beneath a layer of broken stones and a very thin pavement, was found a mass of human bones in the greatest confusion; some still retaining their natural color, others blackened and charred by. fire. Among these bones was picked up an arrow of rock foreign to the country, three admirably polished lance-heads, and some finely cut flint-darts. The dolmen contained no metal objects, and there was no trace of metal on any of the bones.
At the same period the two rites appear to have been practised simultaneously in Armorica, but there incineration was the dominant custom. In one hundred and forty-five megalithic monuments supposed to date from the Neolithic period, seventy-two give proof of incineration and twenty of inhumation only. The others yielded a few cinders, but it was impossible to come to any definite conclusion. In many cases, as we have seen, the megalithic monument was surrounded by a double or tripleenceinteof stones without mortar. Inside theseenceinteswere some small circular structures made of stones reddened by the action of heat. In the lower part of these structures were openings to admit a current of air to fan the flames. These strange structures, full of cinders and black greasy earth, bear the significant name ofRuches de Crémation.33Of thirty-nine sepulchres of the Bronze age twenty-seven gave evidence of incineration, two of inhumation, whilst ten decided nothing one way or the other.34The dolmen of Mont St.-Michel and that of Tumiac are separated by a short distance only; they were erected by the same race and probably about the same period, yet at Mont St.-Michel we find incineration, while inhumation was practised at Tumiac. How explain this difference in funeral customs? Does it imply a diversity of race, of caste, of religion, or of social position, or may it not rather be explained as being merely the result of those later displacements which upset the most careful reasoning?
Whatever may have been the cause of the different modes of burial, we meet with them in every country.
In Scandinavia, during the Bronze age, cremation and burial were practised in about equal proportions. Similar facts are noticed in Germany, but in the North incineration predominates, while in the West it is inhumation. Beneath the cairns of Caithness in Scotland, we find some bodies lying at full length, while others are in a bent position, and large jars of coarse pottery filled with cinders and calcined bones which had belonged to men of medium height. One of the largest of these jars is fifteen or sixteen inches high by forty-nine wide at its largest part.35In excavating the barrows of the Orkney Islands, Petrie noted the practice of both modes of burial36; but were those buried in manners so different contemporaries? This is what we are not told, and what we have to find out.
At Blendowo in Poland, beneath a cromlech was found an urn filled with calcined bones, and thirty centimetres lower down a skeleton was discovered buried in the sand. Near this body was found a coin of Theodosius, and we wonder in vain whether both the individuals, whose remains are thus within a common tomb, lived at the same time. Throughout Prussia and in the Grand Duchy of Posen skeletons and jars containing human ashes are met with in the same tombs.37We must not forget to note, especially, the necropolis of Hallstadt, which was situated in the heart of the district of Bohemia occupied by the Boii. The most ancient of the tombs in these vast burial-places date from about two thousand years before the Christian era, and the Hallstadtian period, as it is sometimes called, culminated during the first half of the millennium immediately before the coming of Christ.38Nine hundred and ninety-three tombs have been excavated; all, to judge by the objects found with the human remains, belonging to the Bronze age; of these five hundred and twenty-seven contained buried bodies, and four hundred and fifty-three cremated relics.39This is a larger proportion than in the primitive necropoles of Italy.
In the tombs in which burial was practised, the bodies were laid in the trench without covering, and the remains of anything in the way of slabs or coffins or protecting planks are very rare; in those tombs in which cremation had been the rule, ustion had often been very incomplete, sometimes the head and sometimes the feet having escaped the flames.
Similar facts are noted at Watsch, at San Margarethen, and at Vermo in Styria, at Rovesche in Southern Carniola, and at Rosegg in the valley of the Drave. At Watsch, but ten skeletons were found, among two hundred examples of incineration. In the cremation sepulchres, if we may so call them, the cinerary urn was protected by large slabs; while in those where burial was practised, the bodies were simply confided to the earth as at Hallstadt; but by a singular contrast, the latter tombs contained much more important relics, the objects with the dead being more valuable and of finer workmanship. At Rovesche, the urn was placed in a square chest made of unhewn stones. The buried bodies lay with the head turned toward the east, an urn was placed at their feet, and their shrouds were kept in place by bronze fibulæ, while on the fingers were many rings of the same metal.
Lastly, to conclude this gloomy catalogue, excavations in the mounds of Ohio and Illinois40have shown that there too cremation and inhumation are met with in sepulchres which everything tends to assign to the same race and the same period.41The sepulchral crypts of Missouri contain several skeletons which had been subjected to intense heat. The human bones were mixed with the remains of animals, fragments of charcoal, and pieces of pottery, with sortie flint weapons. In a neighboring mound excavations revealed no trace of cremation; the bodies were stretched out upon the ground, and those who discovered them picked up near them a valuable collection of flints and of carefully made pottery. There is however nothing to show whether those who buried and those who burnt their dead belonged to the same race or lived at the same time. Cremation long survived among the most savage tribes of Alaska and California, where it is still practised, and the Indians of Florida preserve the ashes of their fathers in human skulls. In California, the relations of the deceased covered their faces with a thick paste of a kind of loam mixed with the ashes of the dead, and were compelled to wear this sign of their grief until it fell off naturally.
Although we meet with the burial of the dead either in a recumbent or a crouching position, everywhere the minor ceremonies connected with death are innumerable; each people, each race, indeed, having its own custom, handed down from one generation to another, and piously preserved intact by each successive family. Feasting was from the earliest times a feature of the funeral ceremonies. An edict of Charlemagne forbids eating and drinking on the tombs of the deceased, and Saint Boniface, the apostle of Germany, complains bitterly that the priests encouraged by their presence these feasts of death. We meet with the same kind of thing among the lower classes at the present day, and the cemeteries of Paris are surrounded with cafés and wine shops, where too often grief is drowned in wine. The custom of holding these feasts really comes down from the earliest inhabitants of Europe, and the savage cave man gorged himself with food upon the tombs of those belonging to him. At Aurignac, in the cave ofL’Homme Mort, in the Trou du Frontal, broken bones and fragments of charcoal bear witness to the repast. Similar traces of feasts are met with beneath the dolmens and the tumuli. From the Long Barrows have been taken the skulls and feet of bovidæ, and it is probable that the other parts of the body had been devoured by the assistants, and that the head and feet were placed in the tomb as an offering either to the dead or to the divinities who are supposed to have presided at the death. In the ancient sepulchres of Wiltshire Sir R. Colt Hoare picked up the bones of boars, stags, sheep, horses, and dogs; which he too considered were the remains of funeral feasts.
Were feasts the only ceremonies connected with interments? We think not. The body was often placed in the centre of the sepulchral chamber, and around it were ranged the wives, servants, and slaves of the deceased, condemned to follow their chief into the unknown world to which he had gone. Beneath a dolmen of Algeria was found a crouching skeleton with two crania lying at his feet, which crania had doubtless belonged to victims immolated in his honor. The barrows of Great Britain preserve traces of human sacrifices, and Cæsar says in speaking of the Gauls: “Their funerals are magnificent and sumptuous. Everything supposed to have been dear to the defunct during his life was flung upon the funeral pile; even his animals were sacrificed, and until quite recently his slaves and the dependants he had loved were burnt with him.”42
The facts we have been noticing prove that early man cherished hopes of immortality. All was not ended for him with death; a new life commences beyond the tomb, marked—for his ideas could go no farther—by joys similar to those he had known on earth, and events such as had occurred during his life. What else could be the meaning of the weapons, the tools of his craft, the vases filled with food placed near the defunct, the ornaments and colors intended for his adornment, the wives, slaves, and horses flung into the same tomb or consumed upon the same pile? It is pleasing to find this supreme hope among our remote ancestors; and clumsily as it was expressed, it implies a belief in a being superior to man, a protecting divinity according to some, but according to some few others a malignant and tyrannical spirit. The proofs so far to hand are not enough to justify us in seriously asserting that ancestors were worshipped by prehistoric man. But the subject is too important for us to refrain from putting before the reader such indications of this worship as have been collected, and which are necessarily connected with the moral and material condition of our remote ancestors.
The radius of a mammoth was discovered at Chaleux, occupying a place of honor on a large sandstone slab near the hearth. The Chaleux Cave dates from the Reindeer period; at which time the mammoth had long since been extinct in Belgium, so that there can be no doubt that the cave man had taken this bone from the alluvial deposits of the preceding epoch, and this huge relic of an unknown creature had been the object of his veneration, a lar or protective divinity of his home. A somewhat similar fact was discovered at Laugerie-Basse and, by a strange coincidence, certain tribes of North America of the present clay preserve the bone of a mastodon or of a cetacean in their buts as a protection to their homes.
From Paleolithic times men were in the habit of cutting celts or hatchets in chalk, bitumen, and other fragile substances, which were certainly of no practical use. Thousands of similar objects in harder rock, but showing no sign of wear or tear, have also been found, and there is little doubt that they all alike served as amulets. This superstitious respect for certain objects lasted for many centuries, and was handed down from one generation to another. The tombs of the Bronze and Iron ages are often found to contain flint hatchets, some of them broken intentionally, a proof, as I have already said, that they were connected with funeral rites of the nature of which we are ignorant.
We also find votive hatchets beneath dolmens. By the side of some skeletons at Cissbury lay flint celts. A hatchet one and a quarter feet long was found in a Lake Station of Switzerland. It was of such friable rock that it can have been of no use but as a symbol; perhaps, indeed, it may have been a badge of office. Lastly, Merovingian tombs contain hundreds of small flint celts, the last pious offerings to the departed.43
We find hatchets engraved on the megalithic monuments of Brittany, on the walls of the caves of Marne, and we meet with them again on the other side of the Atlantic, evidently bearing the same signification, implying respect for them as means of protection. De Longpérier has published a description of a Chaldean cylinder, on which was represented a priest presenting his offering to a hatchet lying on a throne, and a ring was picked up at Mykenæ, on the stone of which was engraved a double-bladed celt. We find the same idea in many different mythologies. The wordNouter(God) is translated in Egyptian hieroglyphics by a sign resembling a celt, and the hatchet of Odin is engraved on the rocks of Kivrik. On a number of Gallo-Romancippi, we find a hatchet beneath which we read the words,Dis Manibus, and lower down the dedication,Sub Ascia dedicavit. At all times and everywhere the hatchet appears as the emblem of force, and is the object of the respect of the people. The tradition of its value and importance is handed down from ancestors to descendants throughout many generations.
Erratic block from Scania, covered with carvings.
May we give a religious interpretation to the basins and cups hollowed out on rocks and erratic blocks and on the so-called Roches Moutonnées, with other monuments that have endured for many centuries (Figs.111and112)? Or must we attribute them merely to passing caprice? Their number and importance we think forbid the latter idea. We find such blocks in Switzerland, in England, France, Italy, Portugal, and on the frozen shores of the Baltic. They are no less numerous in India, and they figure in the curious pictographs of the two Americas. There is no doubt that we have here a common idea, and one it is impossible not to recognize. How. else can we account for the similarity of arrangement in the cup-shaped sculptures from the tumuli of Schleswig-Holstein and those on the Indian rocks of Kamaou, or between those of Algeria and of England?
Engraved rock from Massibert (Lozère).
In Brittany and in Scotland these cup-like sculptures are found on rocks and menhirs, on the walls of sepulchral chambers, on stones forming the sides ofkistvæns, accompanied in many instances with radiated circles, which do not, however, help us to understand them better. In Scandinavia they are known asElfen Stenavs, or elf stones, and the inhabitants come and place offerings on them for theLittle People. According to a touching tradition, these little people are souls awaiting the time of their being clothed once more in human flesh. In Belgium these strangely decorated stones are attributed to theNutons, dwarfs who are very helpful to mortals. In every country there is some legend sacred to the sculptured stones.
Such are the only facts we have been able to collect respecting the religious feeling of prehistoric races. They are not sufficient to authorize any final conclusion on the subject. At every turn we are compelled to admit our helplessness. But yesterday this past without a limit was absolutely unknown to us, and to-day we are but beginning to be able to obtain a glimpse into its secrets. We have been the laborers of the first hour, it will be for those who come after us to complete the task we have been able but to begin. May a genuine love of truth be to them, as we may justly claim it has been to us, the only guide.
1The true name of this cave is theBetche aux Roches. A very excellent essay on the subject was read by the explorers, MM. de Puydt and Lohest, in August, 1886, to the Historic Society of Belgium, and “Les Fouilles de Spy,” by Dr. Collignon, published in theRevue d’Anthropologie, 1887, may also be consulted. Excavations were also carried on in the same cave in 1879 by M. Bucquoy (Bul. Soc. Anth. de Belgique, 1887). He distinguished five ossiferous levels and picked up some flints of the Moustérien type, and even some Chelléen hatchets, to which he gave the name of coupsde poing.—Fraipont and Lohest; “Recherches sur les Ossements Humains Decouvertes dans les Dépôts Quaternaires d’un grotte à Spy.”
2We borrow these details from a valuable work by Cartailhac (Mal., 1886, p. 441;Rev. d’Anth., 1886, p. 448). The conclusions of our learned colleague are that we really know nothing of the funeral rites of the men of Chelles and Moustier, and that it is to the Solutréen period that we must assign the first really authenticated tombs. Cartailhac’s admirable book, “La France Préhistorique,” p. 302, should also be consulted.
3“Ipui Antichi Sepolcri dell Italia.”
4Archæological Journal, vol. xxii.
5Matériaux, 1885, p. 299.
6This dolmen was carefully excavated by MM. Hahn and Millescamps,Bul. Soc. Anth., 1883, p. 312.
7Rivière;Congrès des Sciences Géographiques, Paris, 1878.
8Atti della R. Acad. dei Lincei, 1879–1880. Pigorini:Bul. de Pal. Italiana, 1880, p. 33.
9Soc. Anth. de Munich, 1886.
10Soc. Anth. de Lyon, 1889.
11“Histoire du Travail en Gaule,” p. 24.
12Troyon: “De l’ Attitude Repliée dans la Sépulture Antique,”Revue Arch., 1864.
13Matériaux, 1875, p. 327.
14A. Nicaise:Matériaux, 1880, p. 186.
15Arch. Préhistorique, p. 178.
16Congrès Préhistorique de Bruxelles, p. 299.
17Bul. Soc. Anth., 1876, p. 191. Grad:Nature, 1877, 1st week, p. 314.
18Memorie sulle scoperte paleoethnologiche della campagna romana. Pigorini adds in his turn: “I cadaveri erano abitualmente adagiati sul fianco sinistro, col cranio appogiato sulla mano sinistre e le ginocchia alquanto piegate in guisa che tavolta si trovarono le tibie assai prossime alla cassa toracica.”
19Pallery: “Mon. Mégalithiques de Mascara,”Bul. Soc. Ethn., 1887.
20Bancroft: “The Native Races of the Pacific,” vol. i., pp. 365, etc. Moreno: “Les Paraderos de la Patagonie,”Rev. d’Anth., 1874.
21“Nécropole de Colonna, prov. de Grosseto,”R. Acad. dei Lincei, Roma, 1885.
22Bul. Soc. Anth., 1880, p. 895.
23Abbé Baudry et Ballereau: “Les Puits Funéraires du Bernard,” La Roche-sur-Yon, 1873.
24“Renseignements sur une Ancienne Nécropole Manzabotta, près de Bologna,” Bologna, 1871.
25Gross: “Les Proto-Helvètes.” Morel-Fatio: “Sépultures des Populations Lacustres de Chamblandes.” As at Auvernier, a great many bears’ tusks were found lying near the dead, which may possibly also have had something to do with a funeral rite.
26D. Charnay:North American Review, January, 1881.
27Stuart: “The Early Modes of Burial.”
28Vidal Seneze;Bul. Soc. Anth., 1877, p. 561.
29“Histoire des Incas,” Paris, 1744, chap. xviii.
30Conestabile: “De l’incinération chez les Etrusques.”
31A. Bertrand: “Arch. Celtique et Gauloise,” Introduction.
32Ass. française, Nantes, 1875; Havre, 1877.
33Luco: “Exposition de Trois Monuments Quadrilatères par feu James Miln,” Vannes, 1883.
34P. du Chatellier: “Mém. Soc. d’Emulation des Côtes-du-Nord,” Saint Brieuc, 1883.
35Proceedings Soc. Anth. of Scotland, January 11, 1886.
36“On the Ancient Modes of Sepulchre in the Orkneys” (British Association, 1877).
37Kohn and Mehlis: “Zür Vorgeschichte des Menschen im Ostlichen Europa,” Iéna, 1879.
38Hochstetter: “Die neueste Graber Funde von Watsch. und S. Margarethen und der Kultur Kreiss der Hallstadter Period,” Wien, 1883. Siebenter: “Bericht der Prehistorischen Commission,” Wien, 1884.
39In these tombs were found 61 gold objects, 5,574 bronze, 593 iron, 270 amber, 73 glass, and 1,813 terra-cotta. A. Bertrand:Rev. d’Ethnographie, 1883.
40Smithsonian Report, 1881.
41Putnam, xii. andxx. Reports of the Peabody Museum.
42“De Bello Gallico,” book vi., cap. xix. Consult also Pomponius Mela: “De Situ Orbis,” book iii., cap. ii.
43In his fruitful excavations of Gallic, Gallo-Roman, and Merovingian tombs, Moreau collected no less than 31,515 flint celts or hatchets, which had evidently been votive offerings. See Album de Caranda: “Fouilles de Sainte Restitute, de Trugny, d’Armentière, d’Arcy, de Brenny,” etc.
Prehistoric America. By the Marquis de Nadaillac. Translated, with the permission of the Author, by Nancy Bell (N. D’Anvers), author of “History of Art.” Edited, with notes, by W. H. Dall. Popular edition. $2 25
CHIEF CONTENTS.—Man and the Mastodon—The Kjokkenmöddings and Cave Relics—Mound-Builders—Pottery Weapons and Ornaments of the Mound-Builders—Cliff-Dwellers and Inhabitants of the Pueblos—People of Central America—Central American Ruins—Peru—Early Race—Origin of the American Aborigines, etc., etc.
“The best book on this subject that has yet been published, … for the reason that, as a record of facts, it is unusually full, and because it is the first comprehensive work in which, discarding all the old and worn-out nostrums about the existence on this continent of an extinct civilization, we are brought face to face with conclusions that are based upon a careful comparison of architectural and other prehistoric remains with the arts and industries, the manners and customs, of “the only people, except the whites, who, so far as we know, have ever held the regions in which these remains are found.”—Nation.
The Customs and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples. By the Marquis de Nadaillac. Translated, with the permission of the Author, by Nancy Bell (N. D’Anvers). Fully illustrated. 8vo. $3 00
CHIEF CONTENTS.—The Stone Age, its Duration, and its Place in Time—Food, Cannibalism, Mammals, Fish, Hunting and Fishing, Navigation—Weapons, Tools, Pottery; Origin of the Use of Fire, Clothing, Ornaments; Early Artistic Efforts—Caves, Kitchen-Middings, Lake Stations, “Terremares,” Crannoges, Burghs, “Nurhags,” “Talayoti,” and “Truddhi”—Megalithic Monuments—Industry, Commerce, Social Organization; Fights, Wounds and Trepanation—Camps, Fortifications, Vitrified Forts; Santorin; the Towns upon the Hill of Hissarlik—Tombs—Index.
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