THE WORLD BEFORE HISTORY—IIIThe World Before History--IIIProfessor JOHANNES RANKETHE LIFE OF MAN IN THE STONE AGE
THE WORLD BEFORE HISTORY—III
The World Before History--III
Professor JOHANNES RANKE
Man a Witness of the Flood
T
THE oldest remains affording us knowledge of man are not parts of his body—not the skeleton from which, in the case of primeval animals, we have learned to reconstruct their frame—but evidences of the human mind. Until the discoveries of Boucher de Perthes turned the scale, search had been made in vain among the bones of the fossil fauna for remains of the skeleton of fossil man of undoubtedly the same age; it was not bones, but tools, by which the Abbeville antiquary proved that man had been a “witness of the Flood” in Europe; tools which taught irrefutably that the mental powers of fossil man of the Drift were similar in kind to, if possibly less in degree than, those of living members of mankind. The Drift tools prove that, even in that early epoch to which we have learned from Boucher to trace him back, man was distinctively man.
Boucher de Perthes was an expert archæologist, and he knew that in Europe, in a very early period of civilisation, men had made their tools and weapons of stone, as many tribes and races in a backward state of civilisation—for example in South America, the South Sea Islands, and many other places—do at the present day. These stone implements are practically indestructible, and from ancient times manifold superstitions have attached to the curious articles that the peasant turns up out of the earth in ploughing. Such stone weapons were called lightning-stones by the Romans, as they are by country-folk at the present day. Scientific archæology occupied itself with them at an early date. In 1778 Buffon declared the so-called lightning-stones, or thunder-stones, to be the oldest art-productions of primeval man, and as early as 1734, Mahudel and Mercati had pronounced them to be the weapons of antediluvian man. Such views determined the line of thought in Boucher’s researches. From the very beginning he sought, in the undisturbed Drift beds of his home, not so much for the bones of Drift Man as for his tools, which he suspected to be of the form of the lightning-stones, although he knew that, so far as was hitherto known, these belonged to a very much later epoch—that is, specially to the Alluvial or “Recent” Period.
His expectations were crowned with success. Deep below the mass of overlying loam and sand, right in the strata of gravel and coarse sand, he found stone tools, which without the slightest doubt had been worked by the hand of man for definite and easily recognisable purposes as implements and weapons. Although to a certain extent ruder, they are practically the same forms as the tools, weapons, and implements of stone that we see in use among so-called “savages” of the present day. It is the tool artificially prepared for a certain purpose that raises man above the animal world to-day, as it did in the time of the Drift.
Drift Man’s Three Kinds of ToolsThe Chief Forms of Tools
Upon his first visit to the relic-beds near Abbeville in the spring of 1859, Lyell had obtained seventy specimens of these stone tools from the chief of them. The tools were all of flint, which occurs in abundance in the chalk of the district, and is still obtained and worked for technical purposes at the present day. The worked stones that Boucher found were termed flint or silex tools, according to the material of which they were made. They occurred in the particular beds, as Lyell expressed it, in wonderful quantities. The famous geologist distinguished three chief forms. The first is the spear-head form, and varies in length from six to eight inches. The second is the oval form, not unlike many stone implements and weapons that are still used as axes and tomahawks at the present day—for instance, by the aborigines of Australia. The only difference is that the edge of the Australian stone axes, like that of the European implements of later periods of civilisation known as thunderbolts or lightning-stones, is mostly produced by grinding, whereas on the stone axes from the drift of the Somme valley it has always been obtained by simply chipping thestone, and by repeated, skilfully directed blows. According to Tylor the stone implements of the old Tasmanians were entirely of Drift form and make, all without traces of grinding, being simply angular stones whose cutting-edge had been sharpened by being worked with a second stone. Some of these stone implements of Drift Man may have been simply used in the hand when the natural form of the stone offered a convenient end, but the majority were certainly fastened in a handle in some way or other, to serve as weapons—spear-heads or daggers—both for war and the chase. Lyell’s second chief form would have been used as an axe for such purposes as digging up roots, felling trees, and hollowing out canoes, or to cut holes in the ice for fishing and for getting drinking water in the winter. In the hand of the hunter and warrior the stone axe also became a weapon. As the third form of stone implements Lyell distinguished knife-shaped flakes, some pointed, others of oval form or trimmed evenly at one end, obviously intended partly as knives and arrow-heads, and partly as scrapers for technical purposes.
HOW PREHISTORIC MANKIND IS REVEALEDMost of our knowledge of the earliest life of man has been revealed by the excavator. When at a certain depth below the earth’s surface the skeleton of a man is found, surrounded with rude stone weapons, ornaments, and the remains of domestic animals, a whole chapter in the life of Prehistoric Man stands revealed at one glance. Our photograph shows an actual skeleton and grave of the Stone Age, as discovered in the year 1875 near Mentone.
HOW PREHISTORIC MANKIND IS REVEALED
Most of our knowledge of the earliest life of man has been revealed by the excavator. When at a certain depth below the earth’s surface the skeleton of a man is found, surrounded with rude stone weapons, ornaments, and the remains of domestic animals, a whole chapter in the life of Prehistoric Man stands revealed at one glance. Our photograph shows an actual skeleton and grave of the Stone Age, as discovered in the year 1875 near Mentone.
Although there are many variations between the first two chief forms, yet the typical difference indicating the different purpose of their use is always easily recognised in well-finished examples. A large number of very rude specimens have also been found, of which many may have been thrown away as spoiled in the making, and others may have been only rubbish produced in the working. Evans has practically proved that it is possible to produce such stone implements in their remarkable agreement of form without the use of metal hammers. He made a stone hammer by fastening a flint in a wooden handle, and worked another piece of flint with this until it had assumed the shape of the axe form—the second, oval form—of the Drift implements.
Lyell’s Find in the Somme Valley
Lyell draws attention to the fact that, in spite of the relatively great frequency of stone implements, it would be a great mistake to rely on finding a single specimen, even if one occupied himself for weeks together in examining the Somme valley. Only a few lay on the surface, the rest not coming to light until after removing enormous masses of sand, loam, and gravel. As we may presume with Lyell that the larger number of the Drift stone implements of Abbeville and Amiens were brought into their position by the action of the river, this sufficiently explains why so many were found at great depths below the surface; for they must naturally have been buried in the gravel with the other stones in places where the stream had still sufficient force or rapidity towash stones away. They can, therefore, not be found in deposits from still water, in fine sediment and overflow mud.
Bones of Drift Man are absent from the deposits of the Somme valley, in spite of the wonderful abundance of stone implements. The “lower jaw from Moulin-Quignon, near Abbeville,” had been fraudulently placed there by workmen. But proof of the existence of man is undeniably assured by the objects, so unpretentious in themselves, that have been recognised as the work of his hands.
When once the recognition of Drift Man, founded on the authority of Lyell, was achieved, search for further relic-beds was made in England and France with success. Yet scarcely one of the newly discovered stations was to be compared to those of the Somme valley as regards purity of stratification and conditions of discovery. The relics of the “earliest Stone Age” or “Palæolithic Period,” as the period of Drift Man was called, frequently came from caves and grottos, whose primary conclusiveness Boucher had rightly doubted.
Under these circumstances it was of the greatest importance that in Germany Drift Man was discovered in two places, where not only was the geological stratification just as clear as at Abbeville and Amiens, but where also the relics of Drift Man were found, not in a secondarysitus, as they were then, but in a primary one. In addition to this the two German relic-beds may be safely assigned to the last two great divisions of the Drift Period, to the warmer Interglacial Period, and to the cold Glacial Period proper, with its Postglacial Period; and their climatic conditions were made clear from the remains of plants and animals found in them.
MercierA WORKER IN THE STONE AGEMaking an axehead of flint, like that photographedon the opposite page. From the painting by F. Cormon.LARGER IMAGE
Mercier
A WORKER IN THE STONE AGE
Making an axehead of flint, like that photographedon the opposite page. From the painting by F. Cormon.
LARGER IMAGE
From the occurrence, in the deposits of the Somme, of reindeer that contain the stone implements of Drift Man, we can not, as we saw, exactly settle in what part of the Drift Era man lived there, whether in the Interglacial Period, to which numerous animal remains found there doubtless belong, or not until the “Reindeer” Period, as the last Glacial and early Postglacial Periods were called, when the reindeer was most largely distributed over France and Central Europe. One is inclined to date man’s habitation of the Somme valley back to the Interglacial Period; but it is certainthat the relic-bed near Taubach is the first, and, as far as I can see, the only one hitherto, that has given sure proof of Interglacial Man in Europe. There the oldest vestiges of man in Europe were found that have yet been absolutely proved. We have not hitherto succeeded in Europe in tracing man farther back than the Interglacial Period. Relics of him are hitherto as absent in the older Drift as they are in the Tertiary.
A WORKMAN’S TOOL IN THE STONE AGEFlint implement found in Gray’s Inn, London; now in British Museum.
A WORKMAN’S TOOL IN THE STONE AGE
Flint implement found in Gray’s Inn, London; now in British Museum.
The Taubach relic-bed also furnished no bones of Drift Man among all the parts of skeletons of Drift animals that we have mentioned. Here, too, as in the Somme valley, the proof of the presence of man is based on the works of his hand and mind. Here, too, stone implements and stone weapons are the chief things to be mentioned. But whereas, in the chalk district of France, flints of every size were to be had in the greatest abundance for the preparation of weapons and tools, corresponding stones are not exactly wanting at the two standard German places, though they occur in limited number and size. It is due to this that the larger forms of flint implements, which are most in evidence in the Somme valley, are absent at Taubach. On the other hand, smaller “knives and flakes”—Lyell’s third form of Drift flint implements—occur here with comparative frequency and variety of form. Next to the usual lancet-shaped knife, worked flint flakes, of triangular prismatic form, with sharp corners, are most numerous at Taubach, and scrapers, chisels, awls, and the chipping-stones with which the stone implements were produced may also be distinguished among other things. The material for the implements was supplied by the older Drift débris of the valley—namely, flint, flinty slate, and quartz porphyry.
Besides the stone implements which alone were observed in the Somme valley, still further important relics were found here in their primarysitus. Above all, numerous finds of charcoal and burnt bones prove that the Drift Men of Taubach not only knew how to kindle fire, but were also accustomed to roast the flesh of the animals they killed in the chase. Stones and pieces of shell limestone also occur which have become reddish and hard from the action of heat. These are to be regarded as the floors and side-walls of the fireplaces on which the food was then and there prepared. The animal bones, especially those that were taken up from around the fireplace, appear in most cases to be remains of meals. This is shown at once by the fact that bones of young representatives of the large beasts of the chase—such as the rhinoceros, elephant, and bear—are very frequent ascompared with the rare occurrence of full-grown animals.
Hunters of the Stone AgeHow Drift Man Killed the Great Animals
It appears that in the hunting and capture of animals the young ones were most easily killed, and therefore served chiefly as food. Whenever a large animal was killed, it was probably cut up on the spot by the fortunate hunters, who consumed at once part of its flesh; the trunk was then left at the scene of the killing, while the head, neck, and fore and hind legs, on which was the most muscular flesh, and which were at the same time easier to carry away, were taken to the settlement. This may explain why, among the many large bones of the rhinoceros that have hitherto been found, the ribs and the dorsal and lumbar vertebræ are almost entirely absent. Some of the bones of the beasts of the chase bear the unmistakable traces of man. They are broken in the manner characteristic of “savages” of all ages and climes—for the sake of the marrow, one of the greatest dainties of men living chiefly on animal fare. The broken-off heads of the metatarsal bones of the bison still show particularly clearly the method of breaking. They are broken off transversely exactly where the marrow canal ends, and on all these bones there is a roundish depression, or hole, at the same place—namely, in the middle of their front or back surface, and just where the end of the marrow canal is, therefore about in the centre of the break of the broken-off piece. The hole is a “blow-mark” of one inch in diameter, evidently driven in by force from without, as several well-preserved specimens still show the edges and splinters of bone pressed inward. These splinters and all the breaks are old, and have on the surface the same greasy coating, full of the sand in which they lay, as the bones themselves. The instrument used for breaking the bones in this way might very well have been the lower jaw of a bear with its large canine tooth, as Oscar Fraas has ascertained to have been the case in other places where Drift Man has been found. Such lower jaws were found at Taubach, and the nature and size of the hole and its edges agree with this assumption. The long bones of the elephant and rhinoceros were whole. Drift Man did not succeed in breaking these huge pieces, and where such bones are found broken they are accidental fractures. On the other hand, almost all bones of the bear and bison are intentionally split—in almost all cases transversely, and seldom lengthways.
Drift Man at his Meals
In the Somme valley we have only the flint implements—which, although rude, are very regularly and uniformly made for different recognisable purposes—to tell us of the life and state of Drift Man; but the finds at Taubach afford us a rather closer insight into the conditions of his life and culture. What we had suspected from the first finds is confirmed here. During the Interglacial Period we see near Taubach, on the old watercourse of the Ilm, which had there at that time become dammed up into a kind of pond, a human settlement. This was occupied for a long period, as is proved by the large number of bones, evidently remains of meals, and by the quantity of charcoal. Immediately on the bank were the fireplaces—rude hearths built of the stones obtained without trouble in the neighbourhood. Here the flesh of the beasts of the chase, the bison and the bear, and also the elephant and rhinoceros, was broiled in a crude manner in the hot ashes, as is still done by savages on the level of the Fuegians and primitive tribes of Central Brazil at the present day. For this no utensils are required, a sharpened rod or thin pointed stick being sufficient for turning and taking out the pieces of meat. The ashes that the gravy causes to adhere supply the place of salt and other seasoning. The meat was cut up with the stone knives, and many traces of cuts on the bones may also be attributable to these instruments. For cutting out larger portions a powerful and very suitable instrument was at hand, in the lower jaw of the bear, with its strong canine tooth, which also served for breaking bones to obtain the marrow. In spite of the apparent meanness of the weapons, remains of which we have found, the Drift Men of Taubach were yet able, as their kitchen refuse proves, not only to kill the bison and bear, but also the gigantic elephant and rhinoceros, both young and full grown.
REINDEER HUNTING IN THE LATER ICE AGE. After a picture by W. KranzThe reindeer was the most familiar animal of the Later Ice Age, its body supplying food, clothing, and implements for Glacial Man.LARGER IMAGE
REINDEER HUNTING IN THE LATER ICE AGE. After a picture by W. Kranz
The reindeer was the most familiar animal of the Later Ice Age, its body supplying food, clothing, and implements for Glacial Man.
LARGER IMAGE
WEAPONS OF THE CHASE USED BY PREHISTORIC MANA collection of neolithic lance and arrow heads found in Ireland, now to be seen in the British Museum.
WEAPONS OF THE CHASE USED BY PREHISTORIC MAN
A collection of neolithic lance and arrow heads found in Ireland, now to be seen in the British Museum.
Drift Man after the Hunt
This shows man to have been then, as he is to-day, master even of the gigantic animal forms which so far surpass him in mechanical strength. It is the mindof man that shows itself superior to the most powerful brute force, even where we meet him for the first time. From the finds in the Somme valley it appears that Drift Man already possessed spear, dagger, and axe, besides the knife, as weapons. There the blades were of stone. The relatively small blades of the Taubach stone implements are, it is true, of the same character as the stone implements of Abbeville and Amiens, but they are chiefly, as we have said, merely knife-like articles, very suitable as blades for knives, scrapers, and daggers, and as arrow-heads, but not strong enough as hunting-weapons for such big game. The hunt must, therefore, have been more a matter of capture in pits and traps, as practised at the present day where similar large types of animals are hunted by tribes armed only with defective weapons. The kitchen refuse also proves that the settlement by the Ilm pond, near Taubach, was a permanent one, to which the hunters returned after their expeditions, bringing their game and trophies so far as they were easily transportable. But there is no trace of domestic animals. They could not have completely disappeared, any more than remains of clay vessels, which are still less destructible than bones, and in this respect may be compared to stone implements. There was no trace of potsherds either.
The Best “Find” of the Ice Age
The finds in the Somme valley and near Taubach are of incalculable importance as sure, indisputable proofs of Drift Man in Europe; but as regards the wealth of information to be derived from them respecting man’s psychical condition in that first period in which we can prove his existence, they are far and away surpassed by the find at the source of the Schussen, which Oscar Fraas, the celebrated geologist, has personally inventoried and described. Fraas has rightly given to his description of this find of Glacial Man—the most important and best examined hitherto—the title “Contributions to the History of Civilisation During the Glacial Period.”
The geognostic stratification of the relic-bed on one of the farthest advanced moraines of the Upper Swabian plateau proves that it belongs to the Glacial Period, and that this had already pushed its glacier-moraines to the farthest limit ever reached. In point of time the finds are, therefore, to be placed at the end of the Glacial Period, as it was passing into the Postglacial Period; everything still points to Far Northern conditions of life. The finds at the source of the Schussen are thus decidedly more recent,geologically, than those made at Taubach. They are a typical, or, better,thetypical example of the so-called “Reindeer Period” of the end of the Drift.
IMPLEMENTS OF THE STONE AGE AND THEIR MAKINGThe methods of holding a hammer-stone and of making a flint by pressure are illustrated at the top, those of using a chopping tool at the bottom, of this plate. The other objects are spear-heads, axes, and hammers of stone and flint, and javelin-heads of horn, the latter being smooth and barbed. The method of tying a flint chisel to a wooden handle is shown at the right (×). Most of these objects are to be seen in the British Museum.LARGER IMAGE
IMPLEMENTS OF THE STONE AGE AND THEIR MAKING
The methods of holding a hammer-stone and of making a flint by pressure are illustrated at the top, those of using a chopping tool at the bottom, of this plate. The other objects are spear-heads, axes, and hammers of stone and flint, and javelin-heads of horn, the latter being smooth and barbed. The method of tying a flint chisel to a wooden handle is shown at the right (×). Most of these objects are to be seen in the British Museum.
LARGER IMAGE
From Fraas’s description there seems to be no doubt whatever that the relic-bed, with its remains of civilisation, was perfectly undisturbed, and its palæontological contents plainly show its great geological age. It was perfectly protected by Nature. On the top lies peat, the same that covers the lowlands of the whole neighbourhood for miles, and forms the extensive moorlands of Upper Swabia, on which no other formations are to be seen than the gravel drift-walls thrown up by glaciers of the Drift Period. Under the peat lies a layer of calc-tufa, four to five feet thick, a fresh-water formation from the water-courses that now unite with the source of the Schussen. Under this protecting cover of tufa were the remains of the Glacial Period and Glacial Man. The tufa covered a bed of moss of a dark brown colour, inclining to green, the moss still splendidly preserved. Under this bed of moss was the glacier drift. The moss was dripping full of and intermingled with moist sand. In it were the relics of Glacial Man—all lying in heaps as fresh and firm as if they had been only recently collected. A sticky, dark-brown mud filled the moss and sand and the smallest hollow spaces of antlers and bones, and emitted a musty smell.
EARLY DRINKING VESSELReindeer’s skull used as drinking vessel by men of the Stone Age. British Museum collection.
EARLY DRINKING VESSEL
Reindeer’s skull used as drinking vessel by men of the Stone Age. British Museum collection.
TREASURE-STORES OF PRIMEVAL KNOWLEDGESuch to-day are the mounds of prehistoric rubbish accumulated by the people of the Stone Age. These Danish “kitchen middens” have vastly enriched our knowledge of the remote past.
TREASURE-STORES OF PRIMEVAL KNOWLEDGE
Such to-day are the mounds of prehistoric rubbish accumulated by the people of the Stone Age. These Danish “kitchen middens” have vastly enriched our knowledge of the remote past.
Glacial Man had used the place as a refuse-pit. Among the bones and splinters of bone of animals that had been slaughtered and consumed by man, among ashes and charred remains, among smoke-stained hearthstones and the traces of fire, there lay here, one upon the other, numerous knives, arrow-heads, and lance-heads of flint, and the most varied kinds of hand-made articles of reindeer horn. All this was in a shallow pit about seven hundred square yards in extent, and only four to five feet deep in the purest glacier drift, clearly showing that the excellent preservation of the bones and bone implements was solely due to the water having remained in the moss and sand. The bank of moss was like a saturated sponge; it closed up its contents hermetically from the air, and preserved in its ever-damp bosom what had been entrusted to it thousands of years before.
Under the peat and tufa at the source of the Schussen we find only the type of a purely Northern climate, with Northern flora and Northern fauna. There are no remains of domestic animals—not even of the dog, nor any bones of the stag, roe, chamois, or ibex. Everything corresponds to a Northern climate, such as begins to-day at 70° north latitude. We see Upper Swabia traversed by moraines and melting glaciers, whose waters wash the glacier-sand into moss-grown pools. We find a Greenland moss covering the wet sands in thick banks; between the moraines of the glaciers we have to imagine wide green pastures, rich enough to support herds of reindeer, which roved about there as they do in Greenland, or on the forest borders of Norway and Siberia, at the present day. Here, also, are the regions of the carnivora dangerous to the reindeer—the glutton and the wolf, and, in the second rank, the bear and Arctic fox.
A FAMILY GROUP IN THE STONE AGEIt was thus that the Danish kitchen middens illustratedon the opposite pagewere created. Each family group cast its refuse, in the shape of shells, bones, wood, etc., on the midden near at hand, and these heaps of rubbish in process of time became valuable records of the people’s life, in which the archæologist can read for us the story of the past.LARGER IMAGE
A FAMILY GROUP IN THE STONE AGE
It was thus that the Danish kitchen middens illustratedon the opposite pagewere created. Each family group cast its refuse, in the shape of shells, bones, wood, etc., on the midden near at hand, and these heaps of rubbish in process of time became valuable records of the people’s life, in which the archæologist can read for us the story of the past.
LARGER IMAGE
History in a Rubbish Heap
According to Fraas, it is on this scene that man of the Glacial Period appears; in all probability, a hunter, invited by the presence of the reindeer to spend some time—probably only the better portion of the year—on the borders of ice and snow. It is true that the relic-bed that tells of his life and doings is only a refuse-pit, which contains nothing good in the way of art productions, but only broken or spoiled articles and refuse from the manufacture of implements. The bulk of the materialconsists of kitchen refuse, such as, besides charcoal and ashes, opened marrow-bones and broken skulls of game. Not one of the bones found here shows a trace of any other instrument than a stone. It was on a stone that the bone was laid, and it was with a stone that the blow was struck. Such breaking-stones came to light in large numbers. They were merely field stones collected on the spot, particular preference being given to finely rolled quartz boulders of about the size of a man’s fist. Others were rather rudely formed into the shape of a club, with a kind of handle, such as is produced half accidentally and half intentionally in splitting large pieces. Larger stones were also found—gneiss slabs, from one to two feet square, slaty Alpine limes, and rough blocks of one stone or another, which had probably represented slaughtering-blocks, or done duty as hearthstones, as on many of them traces of fire were visible. Where these stones had stood near the fire they were scaled, and all were more or less blackened by charcoal. Smaller pieces of slate and slabs of sandstone blackened by fire may have supplied the place of clay pottery in many respects; for, with all the blackened stones, not a fragment of a clay vessel was found in the layers of charcoal and ashes of the relic-bed.
Making Drift Man’s Tools
The flint implements are of the form familiar to us from Taubach and the Somme valley, being simply chipped, not ground or polished. At the source of the Schussen, also, only comparatively small pieces of the precious raw material were found for the manufacture of stone implements. So that here, too, as at Taubach, Lyell’s third form, the knife or flake, was practically the only one represented. They fall into two groups—pointed lancet-shaped knives and blunt saw-shaped stones. The former served as knife-blades and dagger-blades, and lance-heads and arrow-heads; the latter represented the blades of the tools required for working reindeer horn. The larger implements are between one and a quarter and one and a half inches broad and three to three and a half inches long; but the majority of them are far smaller, being about one and a half inches long and only three-eighths of an inch broad. The various flint blades appear to have been used in handles and hafts of reindeer horn. Numerous pieces occur which can only be explained as such handles, either ready or in course of manufacture.
Moreover, owing to the want of larger flints, numerous weapons, instruments, and implements were carved from reindeer horn and bone for use in the chase and in daily life. Fraas has ascertained exactly the technical process employed in producing articles of reindeer horn, and we see with wonder how the Glacial men of Swabia handled their defective carving-knives and saws on the very principle of modern technics. They are principally weapons—for example, long pointed bone daggers, otherwise mostly punchers, awls, plaiting-needles (of wood), and arrow-heads with notched grooves. These may possibly be poison-grooves; other transverse grooves may have served partly for fastening the arrow-head by means of some thread-like binding material, probably twisted from reindeer sinews, as is done by the Reindeer Lapps at the present day; other scratches occur as ornaments.
The Skilled Workman of the Drift
The forms of the bone implements show generally a decided sense of symmetry and a certain taste. For instance, a dagger, with a perforated knob for suspension, and a large carefully-carved fish-hook. Groove-like or hollow spoon-shaped pieces of horn were explained by Fraas to be cooking and eating utensils; probably they also served for certain technical purposes—as for dressing skins for clothing and tents, like the stone scrapers found in the Somme valley. A doubly perforated piece of a young reindeer’s antler appears to be an arrow-stretching apparatus, like those generally finely ornamented, used by the Esquimaux for the same purpose. A branch of a reindeer’s antlers, with deep notches filed in, is declared by the discoverer to be a “tally.” The notches are partly simple strokes filed in to the depth of a twelfth of an inch, and partly two main strokes connected by finer ones. “The strokes,” says Fraas, “are plainly numerical signs—a kind of note, probably, of reindeer or bears killed, or some other memento.” Among the objects found were also pieces of red paint of the size of a nut—clearly fabrications of clayey ironstone, ground and washed, and probably mixed with reindeer fat and kneaded into a paste. The paint crumbled between the fingers, felt greasy, and coloured the skin an intense red. It may have beenused in the first instance for painting the body. The Glacial men at the source of the Schussen were, according to the results of these finds, fishermen and hunters, without dogs or domestic animals and without any knowledge of agriculture and pottery. But they understood how to kindle fire, which they used for cooking their food. They knew how to kill the wild reindeer, bear, and other animals of the district they hunted over; their arrows hit the swan, and their fish-hooks drew fish from the deep. They were artists in the chipping of flint into tools and weapons; with the former they worked reindeer horn in the most skilful manner. Traces of binding material indicate the use of threads, probably prepared from reindeer sinews; the plaiting-needle may have been employed for making fishing-lines. Threads and finely-pointed pricking instruments indicate the art of sewing; clothing probably consisted of the skins of the animals killed.
MercierHUNTING FOR FOOD IN THE LATER ICE AGEFrom the painting by Ferdinand Cormon
Mercier
HUNTING FOR FOOD IN THE LATER ICE AGE
From the painting by Ferdinand Cormon
To this material concerning Drift Man, scientifically vouched for, coming fromDrift strata that have certainly never been disturbed, other countries have hitherto made no equal contributions really enlarging our view. Yet the numerous places where palæolithic—that is, only rudely chipped—implements of flint, such as were doubtless used by Drift Man, have been found must not remain unmentioned here. We know of them in Northern, Central, and Southern France, in the South of England, in the loess at Thiede, near Brunswick, and in Lower Austria, Moravia, Hungary, Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal, North Africa, and Russia.
IMPLEMENTS OF THE STONE AGEThe upper illustrations show handles of celt or stone-cutting instruments and method of hafting; the lower picture is that of a handmill of sandstone.
IMPLEMENTS OF THE STONE AGE
The upper illustrations show handles of celt or stone-cutting instruments and method of hafting; the lower picture is that of a handmill of sandstone.
A HUT-CIRCLE OF THE BRONZE AGEOne of the earliest forms of habitation in Britain. From the British Museum “Guide to the Bronze Age.”
A HUT-CIRCLE OF THE BRONZE AGE
One of the earliest forms of habitation in Britain. From the British Museum “Guide to the Bronze Age.”
It is of special importance to note that similar flint tools have also been found along with extinct land mammalia in the stratified drift of the Nerbudda valley, in South India, as the supposition more than suggests itself that Drift Man came to our continent with the Drift fauna that immigrated from Asia. The possibility that man also got from North Asia to North America with the mammoth during the Drift Period can no longer be dismissed after the results of palæontological research. It explains at once the close connection between the build of the American and the great Asiatic (Mongolian) races.
REMAINS OF A STONE AGE MANSIONThese remains of a large pile hut discovered in Germany show that Stone Age Man had made good progress in building. The lower diagram shows a transverse section.
REMAINS OF A STONE AGE MANSION
These remains of a large pile hut discovered in Germany show that Stone Age Man had made good progress in building. The lower diagram shows a transverse section.
THE EARLIEST EFFORTS AT BOAT-BUILDINGThe dug-out canoe, hollowed from a single trunk, was the far-off parent of the ocean-going ship. The upper picture represents a prehistoric canoe found in Sussex and the lower example is taken from a German specimen.
THE EARLIEST EFFORTS AT BOAT-BUILDING
The dug-out canoe, hollowed from a single trunk, was the far-off parent of the ocean-going ship. The upper picture represents a prehistoric canoe found in Sussex and the lower example is taken from a German specimen.
Stone implements of palæolithic form have been found in Drift strata in North America, and the same applies also, as we have seen, to South America. The best finds there were those made by Ameghino in the pampas formation of Argentina. Here marrow-bones, split, worked, and burnt, and jaws of the stag, glyptodon, mastodon, and toxodon have been repeatedly found along with flint tools of palæolithic stamp; and Santiago Roth, who took part in these researches, supposes that fossil man in South America occasionally used the coats of mail of the gigantic armadillos as dwellings. But the civilisation of South American man is doubtless identical with that of European fossil man—tools and weapons of the stone types familiar in Europe, the working of bones, the use of fire for cooking, and animal food, with the consequent special fondness for fat and marrow.