HUMAN FIGURES, SPAIN—EARLY NEOLITHIC.HUMAN FIGURES, SPAIN—EARLY NEOLITHIC
HUMAN FIGURES, SPAIN—EARLY NEOLITHIC
DRAWINGS OF ANIMALS (CRO-MAGNON) FROM ALTAMIRA.DRAWINGS OF ANIMALS (CRO-MAGNON) FROM ALTAMIRA
DRAWINGS OF ANIMALS (CRO-MAGNON) FROM ALTAMIRA
Upper Paleolithic time, beginning with the arrival of the Cro-Magnons, about 25,000 years ago, is divided into four epochs, or, better, four culture-stages: Aurignacian, Solutrean, Magdalenian, and Azilian-Tardenoisian. Even in late Magdalenian days, after a cold and dry interval accompanied by steppe conditions and a new formation of loess, the air became moister and the temperature gradually moderated until it became much like that of to-day. Tundra and steppe animals became more rare; a forest and meadow fauna took possession of Europe. Instead of the reindeer we find stag and roe-deer, cattle, wild boar, bears and wolves, beaver and otter. These were less easily hunted and probablyless abundant than the reindeer and horse had been. As hunting became less profitable, fishing grew more attractive. The streams probably swarmed with fish, and the salmon was probably as abundant throughout northern Europe as in Scandinavia to-day. A change of life is suggested by the implements. The harpoons became ruder. The beautifully flaked lance-heads and the smoothed bone daggers give place to small flints, “microliths,” less fitted for attacking large and dangerous animals. The country seems to have supported a smaller and decreasing population. Cro-Magnon man had always been a reindeer hunter, accustomed and well adapted to the life and conditions of tundra or steppe. The changes were not in his favor or to his liking. Many probably left France and Germany. Those who remained deserted the rock-shelters and cave-mouths, where every spring the water seeping down and dripping through the roof dislodged masses of stone.25The shelter was less needed. Men dwelt more in the open, and fewer records of their presence were preserved.
But Europe was not deserted. There was no “hiatus.” Other peoples were coming in, perhaps better suited to the new conditions, probably mostly of Asiatic origin. Broad-heads, aswell as new long-heads, appear, less attractive physically and mentally, but apparently of tougher fibre and greater staying power than our more striking and charming Cro-Magnons.26A new grand mingling of peoples had already begun or was in its last stages of preparation already advancing from afar in successive waves. In Italy genuine Neolithic culture may already have been introduced. It steals very slowly into northern Europe and overspreads it. The Cro-Magnon race generally migrated or died out, but left its traces in the physical characters of the people of Dordogne and elsewhere.
The Azilian-Tardenoisian epoch leads over to the Neolithic, our chief object of study. Its relative position in prehistoric time is shown in the following scheme:
A.Eolithic Period.Stone implements exceedingly rude, hardly recognizable as artificially chipped; otherwise likeB.
B.Paleolithic Period.Stone implements chipped or flaked, never polished. No domesticated plants or animals. No pottery. Man a collector or hunter, more rarely a fisherman.
C.Transition Period, resemblingBin most respects.
[A,B, andCmake up the Old Stone Age, before the use of metals.]
D.Neolithic Period.Some stone implements polished. No metal except that copper is introduced toward the end of the period. Agriculture with domestic plants and animals. Pottery but no potter’s wheel. Dawn of Civilization.
E.Bronze Period.Bronze implements or utensils. Dawn of History. Begins about 2500 B. C. in northern Europe.
F.Iron Period.Iron introduced. Historic Times. Begins about 1000 B. C. in northern Europe.
DURING the last great advance of the ice in the earlier Magdalenian epoch the Scandinavian peninsula had been buried beneath a great mass of ice, and resembled the central portion of Greenland to-day. A great glacier extended southward, obliterating the Baltic Sea and crowding into northern Germany. As the glaciers withdrew, North Germany became a vast tundra, across which we may imagine the reindeer and other Arctic and subarctic mammals retreating northeastward before the milder forest and meadow conditions already prevailing in France and Russia.27The low temperature of the water of the emerging Baltic is shown by the presence of an arctic bivalve,Yoldia arctica, which has given its name to the epoch. A few scattered bone implements show the presence of reindeer hunters in Germany at this time.
Before the close of the Yoldia period Germany began to pass from tundra to forest—a transformation which was also now progressing in Denmark. The temperature moderated slowly.The land rose in such a way that it separated the Baltic from the North Sea and the Arctic Ocean, with which it had been connected, and made of it a great fresh-water lake. The characteristic animal of this lake was a small pond animal,ancylus, which has given its name to both lake and epoch.
The next epoch—the Litorina (or Tapes) depression—was characterized by a sinking of the land in which the barrier between the Baltic and the North Seas gave place to a wide communication. The Baltic became more salt than at present, and the oyster-banks became abundant. It was during this epoch that the shell-heaps were accumulated.
The following chart gives a condensed view of the succession of events (in reverse order):28
The growth and succession of the forests of Denmark, accompanying changes in conditions of soil and climate, have been clearly traced by Steenstrup.29The scene of his investigations was a moraine country broken by low ranges of hills in the island of Zealand, north of Copenhagen. The hills are often strewn with erratic blocks of rock brought by glaciers, with here and there small lakes, ponds, or peat-bogs often giving place to meadow or forest.
Some of these depressions are filled with a poor variety of peat, dug for fuel, and the sides are often abrupt, steep, and deep. These sides furnish a calendar by showing the different layers which have been formed by successive generations of tree-growth falling into the bog. Thus, in the upper layers we find remains of trees which still flourish in Denmark, while the deepest strata contain the remains of reindeer. The thickness of these layers is between five and seven metres. Their formation, according to Steenstrup, occupied 10,000 to 12,000 years.(1)
The following layers are found in these “calendars,” beginning at the surface:
1. Surface layer. Remains of the beech, which furnishes the chief beauty of the forests of Denmark to-day.
2. Oak. The beginning of this layer was contemporary with the Litorina depression.
3. Scotch pine (pinus sylvestris). The earliest pines were dwarfed, the trunks showing as many as seventy rings to the inch. In upper strata their trunks were a metre or so in diameter. In the Lillemose moor, near Rudesdal, the whole eastern side, twenty metres deep, was filled with pines. While no human remains have been found in these moors, a stone axe embedded in a pine trunk, and a stone arrow-head in a bone of thebos primigenius(which, like the auerhahn or pine partridge lived on the young pine shoots) have been discovered. The soil best adapted to the pine is a damp soil, poor in humus, whereas the present rich, fertile soil of Denmark is best suited to the beech. This explains the fact that pine forests no longer grow there.
4. At the bottom, poplars and aspens. The clay underlying the pines and poplars contains leaves of arctic willows and saxifrages.
Through these types of strata we may trace the epochs described at the beginning of the chapter. The pine characterizes the Azilian-Tardenoisian-Ancylus Epoch; at the time of the Litorina depression it was fast giving place to the oak, which remains characteristic of the Neolithic and Bronze periods, yielding to thebeech during the Iron Age. But this advance must have been gradual and the boundary of advance irregular.
Blytt has traced a very similar succession of changes in flora and climate in southern Norway, and Geikie in Scotland.30These changes are very important in our study of the traces of man’s first appearance in Denmark as furnishing not only their setting but also their chronology.
Shell-heaps are found all over the world in favorable sheltered localities where sea food is abundant, especially near clam flats. Hence they are not characteristic of any one race or time. Some are very ancient, some comparatively or very modern. They merely show the remains of the camping-grounds of people in a low stage of culture. Every one has its own history and its own slight or marked peculiarities.
The Danish shell-heaps or kitchen-middens are mounds generally about fifty metres wide and one hundred metres long, and perhaps one metre in thickness. But, as we should naturally expect, the size varies greatly according to the advantages of the situation, the number of inhabitants, and the length of time that it was inhabited.
SHELL-HEAP.SHELL-HEAP
SHELL-HEAP
SHELL-HEAP AXE.SHELL-HEAP AXE
SHELL-HEAP AXE
SHELL-HEAP JAR.SHELL-HEAP JAR
SHELL-HEAP JAR
The age of these shell-heaps is shown approximately by the presence of the auerhahn, proving the neighborhood of pine forests. The charcoal in the fireplaces came from oak wood, showing that oak forests are overspreading the country. The Baltic was more salt than at present, and the shore line was depressed. These facts indicate a period of transition from the Ancylus to the Litorina Epoch. The stone implements resemble those of western Europe during the late transition epoch, and do not occur in the oldest graves. There are no domestic animals except the dog, and no cultivated plants except some wheat in the later remains. All this seems to prove that genuine Neolithic culture had not yet reached the shores of the Baltic. They are composed mostly of oyster shells with a mingling of those of scallops, mussels, and periwinkles. The oyster has now disappeared from large parts of the coast and in others has decreased in size. Land elevation has narrowed the connection of the Baltic with the North Sea, and the water contains less salt.
Remains of cod and herring show that the fishermen who lived on or near these harbors ventured out to sea in dugouts or on rafts, and that they must have made lines for fishing in fairly deep water. Remains of other fish occur.Bones of birds are often very abundant, especially swamp, shore, and swimming species; wild geese and ducks, swans and gulls, theAlca impennisor wingless auk, now extinct. The blackcock, or “spruce (pine) partridge,” was then common, but has now disappeared from Denmark with the pine whose buds formed a large part of its food.
Bones of stag, deer, and wild boar form, according to Steenstrup, 97 per cent of all those of mammals found at Havelse.31Bones of seal, otter, wolf, fox, bear, beaver, and wildcat also occur. There are no traces of reindeer or musk-ox. These animals had already migrated or died out. Steenstrup noticed that the long bones of birds are about twenty times as numerous as others of their skeletons, and that the heads or ends of the long bones of mammals are generally missing. These were exactly the parts which are gnawed by dogs, whose remains also occur. Hence he drew the inference, now universally accepted, that the dog was domesticated in Denmark at this time. It was a small species, apparently akin to the jackal and of southeastern origin. No remains of other domesticated animals have been found, nor of cultivated plants, except a few casts of grainsof wheat in the pottery of the upper layers of some of the heaps.
Daggers, awls, and needles were made of bone; also combs apparently used for stretching sinews into long threads. The flint implements are rudely chipped, never polished. We find long flakes used as knives, and numerous scrapers and borers.32The axe, if we may call it so, was of peculiar form, approaching the triangular and looking as if made out of a circular disk of flint by breaking away two sides of the periphery, leaving a somewhat flaring cutting edge. The middle was thick, the edge tapered somewhat rapidly, making a rough but quite durable instrument. Longer implements in the form of chisels or picks were also roughly flaked with skilfully retouched edges, often with one end narrowed or bluntly pointed. In all cases the work is very rude compared with the best specimens of Paleolithic time. Arrow-heads are common, usually with a broad edge instead of a point, well suited to killing birds and small mammals. The bone harpoon seems to have gone out of use.
The pottery is thick, heavy, crude, with practically no ornament, except finger-prints around the upper edge. The jars are sometimes oflarge size; often the base is pointed instead of flat or rounded. Hearths of calcined stones are abundant. Sometimes these are surrounded by circular depressions in the heaps, which may mark the form and position of huts or shelters; or these may have been placed under the lee of the near-by forests. No graves or human remains of this period have been found.
Shell-heaps quite similar to those of Denmark were discovered at Mugem, in Portugal, in the valley of the Tagus, twenty-five to thirty metres above sea-level, and thirty to forty miles from the mouth of the river. The shells are of marine origin, and indicate a considerable elevation of land since their accumulation. The stone implements are very primitive and of Azilian-Tardenoisian type. Large flat stones, perhaps for grinding, perhaps for dressing skins, occur. Pottery occurs only in the upper layers, where the bones of mammals increase in number. There are no polished implements, no traces of domesticated animals, not even of the tame dog. Graves were found here and there; and while the skulls were badly contorted, they seemed to show that the inhabitants were partly long-headed, partly broad-heads. Remains, apparently of the same age, have been found in Great Britain.
Even the Danish shell-heaps are not all of the same age. According to Forrer, Havno is ancient; Ertebolle is also old, but was long inhabited, and some of its uppermost layers may be full Neolithic; Aalborg and others are younger. Mugem strikes us as more ancient than the similar Danish remains. Other remains near the Baltic suggest very strongly quite marked differences in age or in the culture of their inhabitants, or in both these respects. We can notice only two of these.
Maglemose lies on the west coast of Zealand near the harbor of Mullerup. Here a peat-bog has encroached upon a fresh-water lake and has covered a mud bottom strewn with shells of pond-snails and mussels. Pines had grown in the swamp, and their stumps still protrude into or above the moss. The implements were found a little above the old lake bottom between seventy centimetres and one metre below the surface of the peat. The remains of the settlement were distributed over an area about one hundred feet long and broad. The charred or burned wood was very largely (eighty per cent) pine, ten per cent hazel, a little elm and poplar. No oak was found here, but oak-pollen grains were found in the same level as the settlement, or slightly higher and later. Flint cracked byheat and charred fragments of wood were found, but no definite hearths. Bones of fresh-water fish and of swamp turtles occur. The shore could not have been very distant even if it stood considerably higher, but no bones of marine fish have been found. Many birds were hunted. The mammals include boar, deer, stag, and urus. The dog is the only domesticated animal.
Flint chips are abundant at Maglemose; long knife-flakes and axes are rare. Scrapers and nuclei are numerous. The arrow-heads are long and pointed instead of broad and edged, as in the usual Danish shell-heap. Many of these so-called arrow-heads may have been nothing more than microliths used for a great variety of purposes. No flint implements or fragments show any trace of polishing. Bone implements are numerous. We find rude harpoons of a very late Magdalenian type. Also, some of the bone implements are ornamented with various patterns of incised lines, and even one or two rude drawings of animals occur. The culture evidently differs quite markedly from that of the ordinary shell-heaps. It is worthy of notice that the mud of the lake bottom and the overlying peat were continuous over and around the whole area of the settlement; there is no signof any island at this point and the settlement was some 350 metres from the original shore of the lake. There are abundant traces of fire but no hearths. No traces of piles have been discovered. All this seems to corroborate Sarauw’s view that the people lived on a raft all the year round. Sarauw considers the remains as of the same age as the oldest shell-heaps. But there is a wide-spread tendency to consider Maglemose as considerably older, belonging probably to the close of the Ancylus Epoch.
Virchow has described a heap composed of mussel-shells on the outlet of Burtnecker Lake, east of Riga, called Rinnekalns.33Its most interesting feature is its pottery made of clay mixed with powdered mussel-shells, giving it a peculiar glitter. It is ornamented with lines arranged in an angular geometrical pattern encircling the vessel. Similar pottery can be followed far southward into Russia and westward as far as East Prussia, but not farther into Germany. Bored teeth used for ornaments occur. Bone implements are numerous, often ornamented with fine lines in zigzag or network. We find harpoons also. The flint industry was poorly and sparingly developed. Graves were discovered, but their contents proved that they belonged to a much later period.
The culture is peculiar, paralleled to a certain extent but not repeated in western Europe. We still seem to detect the influence of a decadent, late Magdalenian style of ornament. Virchow considered them as very late Paleolithic or very early Neolithic.
The shell-heaps of different regions resemble one another in general features, but differ and show their individuality in details of culture. These peculiarities may be due to difference of age or of culture or population, or to both. We must first attempt to find some place for them in the chronological succession discovered in France. They cannot be much older than the French period of transition, when Scandinavia first became habitable. But good cave-series covering the transition epoch are rare, and usually very incomplete. In 1887 Piette found a remarkable series in a cave or natural tunnel at Mas d’Azil, near Toulouse.34The most important strata were the following:
1. A dark layer evidently Magdalenian.
2. A yellow layer deposited by river floods.
3. Dark Magdalenian layer, with reindeer harpoons, engravings, and sculptures. Reindeer becoming rare; stag increasing.
4. Barren yellow layer, like 2.
5. Reddish layer (Azilian). No reindeer. Stag abundant. Flints nearly all of Magdalenian types. Flattened stag-horn harpoons perforated at base. Bone points and smoothers. Pointed flat pebbles. Bones of stag, bear, boar, wildcat, beaver.
6. Bones of wild boar, stag, horse. Flints similar to those in 5. Beginnings of pottery and of polishing; but not of polished axes. Piette’s Arisian. Beginning of Neolithic.
7. Neolithic and Bronze remains.
Layer 5 evidently represents a period posterior to the Magdalenian and anterior to the real Neolithic. Hence Piette considered it as marking a distinct Azilian Epoch, resembling the Magdalenian in most of its flint implements, in the absence of pottery and of polished axes. But the reindeer has here given place to the stag, and the harpoon has changed correspondingly and is less skilfully made. Bone implements are decadent.
Another culture, the Tardenoisian, was of exceedingly wide range. It took its name from Fère-en-Tardenois, Department of Aisne, northeast of Paris, and was characterized by its very small “pygmy” flints of various, usually geometric forms.35This microlithic industry wasfound in France, Belgium, England, Germany, Russia, and along the southern shore of the Mediterranean. The culture was well represented along rivers and inlets, and seemed to characterize a fishing rather than hunting folk.
In 1909 Breuil and Obermaier found in the grotto of Valle, in northern Spain, a classic Azilian deposit, forming the lower levels of a series rich in these microliths or pygmy flints. The Azilian was more nearly a continuation of the Magdalenian culture, while the Tardenoisian, in France, seemed to be an importation from the Mediterranean region. Since the two were so closely related in point of time it seemed safe and wise to combine the two names and call the epoch the Azilian-Tardenoisian, the Azilian representing the older portion.
The station of Campigny, on the lower Seine, seems to be somewhat later than the Azilian-Tardenoisian.36Here, in a pit oval in outline, with a long diameter of 4.30 metres, evidently an ancient dwelling, there were found bits of pottery, utensils of older stone epochs, no polished implements, but the tranchet or axe and the pick (pic) characteristic of the Danish shell-heaps. These Campignian remains are hardlywidely enough diffused or sufficiently definite to give name to a distinct epoch. They may well be nearly contemporaneous with the (older?) shell-heaps.
The whole transition epoch, which we have hastily surveyed, shows us a series or mixture of disconnected cultures, yet with curious and striking interrelations. This may be partly due to the fact that the population of Europe was diminished and scattered. Little groups of people formed more or less isolated communities, and developed their own special peculiarities according to situation, needs, and opportunities. Connecting links, or intermediate cultures, which may once have existed, have been completely lost or still remain to be discovered. The general desertion of the caves destroyed one of our best sources of continuous records.
But the cause of this diversity lies deeper. New cultures and new waves of migration of peoples were pouring into Europe, especially into the Baltic region now left free of ice, enjoying a mild climate, and offering an abundance of food along the shores of its rivers, lakes, and seas. The Tardenoisian culture had spread northward from the Mediterranean. The broad-headed people of Furfooz, Grenelle, and Ofret had apparently crossed Europe from theeast and had settled in a long zone extending northward and southward through Belgium and France and probably southward into Spain, for we remember the broad-heads found at Mugem, in Portugal. But their distribution was far wider than this strip of territory. New Neolithic types of culture had already entered Italy, perhaps as early as Magdalenian times. Series of waves appear to have passed into Poland, Russia, and Siberia, and to have moved northward until they reached the coast in Scandinavia and to the eastward. In all these cases we may probably imagine a gradual and perhaps slow infiltration or “seeping” in of the new population rather than an invasion in crowds or masses, such as we are likely to imagine. Vast stretches of habitable land had been newly opened, and there was plenty of room for all comers. In many regions the old population may have remained comparatively undisturbed until a much later date. But even they slowly came under the influence of the new and improved technique and mode of life. All this collision of culture and conflict of peoples meant stimuli, awakening, the jogging of dull minds, a veritable spur of necessity. A new day was beginning to break. The dawn was dim and cloudy, but there was the possibility and prospect of clear shining.
OUR history of Paleolithic times is drawn very largely from the successive strata of remains found in rock-shelters and near the mouths of caves, where the succession of epochs is clear and indubitable. We naturally look for similar reliable testimony concerning the chronological succession of Neolithic utensils, pottery and other remains. Here, however, we have been disappointed to a large degree. Paleolithic layers were generally or frequently overlaid by beds of stalagmite or fallen rocks, which have saved them from disturbance. But the Neolithic and Bronze layers are superficial, usually of no great thickness; they have been less solidified and protected, and far more exposed to the disturbing work of burrowing mammals and of men digging for buried treasures. These circumstances, combined with far less continuity of occupation, have greatly diminished the chronological value of their study.
Neolithic cave remains occur in somewhat limited areas scattered all over Europe.37Theyhave been studied in England, France, Spain, Austria, and Germany in at least fairly large numbers. In Austria the cave province extends through Galicia, Moravia, and Bohemia. Here we find primitive pottery; rude stone and numerous bone implements; domesticated cattle, goats, and pigs. Game was evidently very abundant. The cave-dwellers, apparently, were pioneers in the less habitable regions, living mostly by hunting and fishing, from the increase and products of their herds, and from agriculture to a far less degree. The pottery and implements remind us somewhat of those of the earliest lake-dwellings. But we often find bits of copper and bronze, suggesting a later date or a series of inhabitants whose relics have become much mixed. It would not be at all surprising if primitive manufactures had remained here longer in use than in less isolated regions. A deposit of quite similar general character has been found at Duino, near Monfalcone, at the head of the Gulf of Trieste.
A second province lies in Bavaria, between Bamberg and Baireuth. Hoernes considers its remains as also of the same age as the oldest lake-dwellings, but with peculiarities due to the different geographical conditions. The cave provinces of other countries are equally interesting.Every one has its own features and problems. We would naturally expect that these cave-dwellers would represent the least progressive and prosperous members of the population of any country. In our general survey we can afford to give them only a hasty glance. We can easily understand that where chalk or other soft rock occurred artificial grottos were often excavated.38
Remains of dwellings are common all over Europe, and are likely to be uncovered wherever excavations are made in grading or for the foundations of buildings. They are of two forms: the rectangular house and the round hut. The rectangular form is the rule in the lake-dwellings, though with exceptions; on the land the reverse is true. The pit-dwelling at Campigny was elliptical in form with a longest diameter of 4.30 metres. We remember that the settlement at Campigny is probably little, if at all, younger than the shell-heaps. But by far the commoner form of pit-dwelling is circular, with a diameter rarely exceeding two metres. Such small circular pits are exceedingly common. At the bottom we find ashes, bones of animals, implements, and fragments of clay once forming a part of the superstructure, baked hard whenthe hut was burned, and still having marks of the twigs and branches over which the clay had been plastered. We picture to ourselves the hut as mostly underground, with a diameter usually not exceeding one and one-half to two metres, excavated to a depth of one or two metres, the pit often surrounded by a rude wall of field stones. In the centre was the hearth. The superstructure was merely a cone composed of a framework of poles interlaced with branches and twigs plastered with clay. In the primitive hut there was no perpendicular side wall above ground, though in some the roof may have been raised somewhat on the earth thrown out from the pit. Such differences of detail are of slight importance. The huts are of all ages. They were probably erected far back in Paleolithic time. They seem to be figured in Magdalenian cave-frescoes.39Even the Chellean hunters could hardly have erected more primitive shelters. But equally rude huts are still inhabited in the Balkan Peninsula,40and are described by classical writers as inhabited by the Germans.
Says Tacitus (Germania, XLVI) of the Finns of his day: “They lead a vagrant life: their food the common herbage; the skins of beasts their only clothing; and the bare earth their resting-place.... To protect their infants from the fury of wild beasts and the inclemency of the weather, they make a kind of cradle amidst the branches of trees interwoven together, and they know no other expedient. The youth of the country have the same habitation, and amidst the trees old age is rocked to rest. Savage as this way of life may seem, they prefer it to the drudgery of the field, the labor of building, and the painful vicissitudes of hope and fear, which always attend the defense and the acquisition of property. Secure against the passions of men, and fearing nothing from the anger of the gods, they have attained that uncommon state of felicity, in which there is no craving left to form a single wish. The rest of what I have been able to collect is too much involved in fable....”
Let us hope that the reports which Tacitus had been able to collect concerning the dwellings, as well as the ferocity, filth, and poverty of the Finns, were somewhat exaggerated. Evidently conical, largely subterranean huts have been common in Europe down to far later than Neolithic times. The age of any pit-dwelling can be determined only by its contents.
In addition to these circular pits, long or short trenches occur. Forrer found at Stutzheim one cellar more than ten metres long, andvarying from one to three metres in width, with several lateral enlargements as pantries and storehouses.41Forrer considers this as the home of the chief man, the “manor-house” of the settlement. Around it he found remains of huts such as we have already described. Frequently space for storage as well as dwelling was gained by clustering small huts. This plan would have had the advantage of protection against loss of everything by fires, which must have been frequent. Such cramped dwellings, with the garbage scattered over the bottom of the hut, or in the huts of the most highly cultured deposited in a special hole in one corner, could hardly have been attractive, clean, or sanitary. But they were cool in summer and warm in winter, and afforded protection against wind and weather. People asked and expected no more. Housekeeping was simple, if not easy. But we can imagine that the return of spring, allowing them to emerge from their burrows, must have been hailed with delight.
We have still much to learn concerning these Neolithic dwellings. They have been discovered by chance, and usually studied only hastily and superficially. A pit discovered and examined may have been only one of a large clusteror village, of which the rest remained undiscovered. Wooden houses of logs, or with a strong frame of poles seem to have existed in Bronze, or even late Neolithic times. Sophus Müller42describes settlements in Denmark where the abundance of ashes and utensils prove long-continued habitation, and yet no pits seem to have been found—this may be due to insufficient investigation—strongly suggesting, at least, houses entirely above ground built of perishable materials. It is very hard to believe that even a Neolithic family could have lived through the winter in one, mainly subterranean, dwelling only two metres in diameter, with a fireplace in the middle. They would have been compelled to sleep sitting or standing! Probably Stutzheim and other similar settlements which have been discovered, represent the real general average of pit-dwellings, while besides these there were many of far superior style and comfort. The development of the Greek house is still a problem, much more that of a North German dwelling.
As an example of late Neolithic settlement of the better or best class, we may take Grosgartach, near Heilbronn, in the Neckar valley.43Here, where now are low meadows, was once alake connected with the Neckar. The Neolithic village was carefully and skilfully explored by Hofrath Schliz, whose report is a model of careful observation and clear description.
The situation was very favorable, with loess-clad hills sloping to rich meadows, and the lake furnishing fish and a line of communication. The areas occupied by the houses and stalls were clearly marked by the dark “culture-earth” contrasting sharply with the yellow loess. The principal house was rectangular. The outer wall was composed of posts with a wattling of twigs. This was plastered with clay, mixed with chaff and straw. The inner face of the wall was smoothly finished, and then “kalsomined” reddish yellow, and still further decorated with fresco in geometrical designs. The house—5.80 metres by 5.35 metres—was divided into two rooms. The larger part of the house was occupied by the kitchen, with its floor about one metre below the surface of the ground, and entered by an inclined plane or ramp. The other chamber, the sleeping-room, was nearly a metre above the kitchen and separated from it by a partition. Benches cut out of the loess were found in both kitchen and sleeping-room. Stalls for cattle and barns or granaries were also found.Virchow, in his review of Schliz’s monograph, emphasizes the fact that apparently Grosgartach was deserted by its inhabitants and fell into decay without leaving any signs of destruction by fire or violence.
The villages of Butmir, Lengyel, Jablanica, and others in southeastern Europe show us a condition of advanced culture here also.44Déchelette, speaking of the culture of this region, notices “the striking analogies between these old walled villages of the Balkans and the Danube valley, and those of the Ægean villages of the Troad and Phrygia.” Primitive idols, painted pottery, frequent use of the spiral in decorative art, all these reappear here and there in the Neolithic stations of southeastern Europe, and in the eastern basin of the Mediterranean in pre-Mycenæan and Mycenæan days. Evidently houses, settlements, modes of life, and stages of culture differ greatly during the same epoch of the Neolithic period in different parts of Europe. Italy was always far in advance of Europe north of the Alps. But even in northern Europe there was great diversity. Shell-heap dwellers still remained long after a much higher culture prevailed throughout most of Denmark. The life and thought of the pioneer hunters of northernGermany, and still more of northern Russia, were very different from those of the agriculturists along the valley of the Danube and in the Balkan Peninsula. In Greece little city-states began to arise early. Even in northern Europe density of population and size of settlements varied greatly. One illustration of these differences can be seen in the occurrence of fortified villages and refuges.45The age of these fortifications is as great a problem as that of the remains found in a pit-dwelling. The village may be, probably usually is, much older than the surrounding wall, and an earthen wall may contain Neolithic or even perhaps Paleolithic implements. The custom of fortifying villages evidently spread rapidly during the Bronze and Iron periods. Sophus Müller tells us that all walled settlements north of the Alps are far younger than the Neolithic period.46This statement, often disputed or neglected, is probably an exaggeration, but may well be true of the region surrounding the Baltic. The sparse and scattered hunting and pioneer population of Scandinavia and Germany had no need of building permanent walls around their single houses or small villages. They had very little wealth to protect.
But an agricultural population inhabiting a fertile region open to attack might well surround their villages with a wall, or provide a burg, or fortified place or “refuge,” whither they might drive their cattle or transport their grain. Examples of this are Stutzheim and Urmitz, in the Rhine valley, always a great thoroughfare, and in Switzerland and along the maritime Alps villages of this sort seem to have been fairly frequent. Apparently they were still more numerous in the valley of the Danube and in the Balkan Peninsula. It is not at all surprising to find them in Thessaly, so near to the advanced civilization of Greece.
Another class of settlements usually well protected were the workshops (ateliers) and manufacturing villages, especially those where flint was mined, or where flint implements were made in large quantities and distributed by trade over wide areas.47During the Neolithic period these settlements would have held much the same place and importance as our centres of coal, iron, manufacturing, and business have with us to-day. Grand Pressigny and Camp de Chassey, in France, and Cissbury, in England, are single examples of a great number of such fortified mining and manufacturing villages.For a further study of these very interesting remains the reader is referred to the manuals of Déchelette and Hoernes.
Even before the close of the Paleolithic period tundra and steppe were giving place to forests, which were advancing even into Scandinavia. The forest looms large and terrible in the works of classical writers and German antiquarians. Says Tacitus: “Who would leave the softer climes of Asia, Africa, or Italy to fix his abode in Germany, where Nature offers nothing but scenes of ugliness, where the inclemency of the seasons never relents?... The face of the country, though in some parts varied, presents a cheerless scene, covered with the gloom of forests, or deformed with wide-extended marshes.” He says that the soil produces grain and is well stocked with cattle, though of small size. But grain does not grow in primeval forests, and herds of cattle need at least open glades for pasturage. It is an extreme picture tinged by the homesickness of a citizen of sunny Italy. Northern Europe was generally heavily forested until long after Tacitus’s time. The Romans began in earnest the work of deforesting France, and the work was carried on all over Europe in mediæval times. The Neolithic immigrants probably made small clearings withthe aid of fire, especially where the trees were low and not too thick, as on many light-soiled areas. They could make but little impression on the heavy forest growth, though they could limit its spread. They probably did not need to make wide clearings of dense forest. There were many open stretches of country of greater or less extent awaiting occupants and culture. This was true especially of districts occupied by the loess, whose origin from dust drifted by Paleolithic wind-storms we have already noticed.
Geikie describes loess as typically a “fine-grained, yellowish, calcareous, sandy loam, consisting very largely of minute grains of quartz with some admixture of argillaceous and calcareous matter.”48It is for the most part a wind-blown deposit. It is widely developed over low-lying regions, but sweeps up to heights of 200 to 300 feet and more above the bottoms of the great river valleys. Again, in many places we find it heaped up under the lee of hills, the exposed windward slopes of which bear no trace of it. Wherever there is loess we are likely to find the remains of steppe plants and animals. The ancient steppe area which generally covers, and probably extends considerablybeyond, the loess district, is the region occupied by most of the primitive settlements. Even to-day it is less wooded than the rest of northern Europe. Such steppe regions in the North German plain are the great diluvial river terraces, especially the terraces of the Saale and Elbe and the eastern edge of the Harz Mountains; in South Germany the lower Alpine “Vorland” from Switzerland to lower Austria, the uplands of Suabia and Franconia, the valleys of the Main and Neckar, and much of northern Bohemia. These steppe regions of Germany, northern Austria, and Switzerland extended southeastward in a zone following the Danube, widening out in the great Hungarian plain into the vast steppe region extending eastward from the Black Sea or Pontus. From this Pontic steppe a band of more or less open country extended northward along the Carpathians until it almost or quite joined the open regions of the Elbe and along the Harz. A farther extension of this same band seems to have opened the way from the Harz region through northwest Germany into Belgium and northern France, and very probably into Brittany. We see at once the importance of these long lines of open or thinly forested country to the immigrationsand settlement of Neolithic peoples. Periodical floods or other conditions kept open many river valleys, whose importance we shall estimate in a later chapter. All this land, except the uplands of Suabia and Franconia, and some similar areas, was comparatively fertile, the loess areas particularly so, and suited to a primitive agriculture.
In England the valleys of the Thames and other rivers were heavily wooded and not populated until much later. But the long lines of chalk-downs and oolitic uplands were far less favorable to forest growth. In Norfolk and Suffolk there were apparently open spaces. Yorkshire and Derbyshire had very similar landscapes. The forest was held back wherever the porous chalk formation made a large outcrop. In these places man could settle and find pasturage for his flocks and attempt a poor sort of agriculture, even in Neolithic days. Hence we find these regions dotted with Neolithic settlements. The immigrants who came in during the Bronze period settled in the same regions. Here again clearing of the forest on any large scale was apparently not attempted until Roman times, but along its boundaries, where the forest growth was not too heavy,these primitive agriculturists may well have cut off the lighter growth for fuel and buildings, and thus have gradually appreciably extended the arable area.
THE winter of 1853-1854 was exceedingly cold and dry. The surface of the Swiss lakes sank lower than at any time during many preceding centuries. The lowering of the water tempted the inhabitants along the shore to erect dikes and thus fill in the newly gained flats. During this process the workmen along the edge of the retreating water came upon the tops of piles, and between those great quantities of horn and stone implements and fragments of pottery. Aeppli, a teacher in Obermeilen, called the attention of the Antiquarian Society in Zurich to these discoveries. The society recognized at once their importance, and under the leadership of its president, Ferdinand Keller, began a series of most careful investigations which have contributed more to our knowledge of life during the Neolithic period than any discoveries before or since.
The number of these lake-dwellings is very large. Lake Neuchatel has furnished over 50; Lake Leman (Geneva) 40; Lake Constance over40; Lake Zurich 10. The shores of the smaller lakes have also contributed their full quota.49In some of the lakes where the shore was favorable, remains of a lake-dwelling have been found before almost every modern village. Sometimes we find the remains of two villages, one somewhat farther out than the other. In these cases the one nearer the shore is the older, usually Neolithic, while the one farther out belongs to the Bronze period.
These settlements are by no means limited to Switzerland. They stretch in a long zone along the Alps from Savoy and southern Germany through Switzerland into Austria.50Herodotus mentions them in the Balkan Peninsula. The amount of bronze seems to increase as we pass from east to west. They are found frequently in the Italian lakes, mostly containing relics of the Bronze Age, though here the western settlements contain little or no metal. A second series has been discovered in Britain and northern Germany, and extending into Russia. These are considerably younger. The scheme of the lake-dwelling was used in historic times in Ravenna and Venice. Large numbers are still inhabited in the far east.
A sunny, sheltered shore, protected by hillsfrom storms and action of waves, was always an attractive site.51The character of the land, if open and suitable for pasturage and cultivation, was doubtless important. Much depended on the character of the bottom. Where the shore shelved off gradually and was composed of marl or sand, the piles could be easily driven, and could hold their place firmly. Even if the shore was somewhat too hard and the piles could be driven only a little distance, they were strengthened by piles of stones, often brought from a considerable distance. When a suitable location had been discovered and selected the trees were felled partly by the use of stone axes, and partly by fire, and one end of the log was pointed by the same means, according to Avebury. Their diameter was from three to nine inches, and their length from fifteen to thirty feet. During the Bronze period larger trees were felled and split, and larger piles had to be used in the deeper water farther from the shore.52
These rudely sharpened piles were driven into the bottom by the use of heavy stone mallets. This must have involved an immense amount of hard labor, for at the settlement of Wangen 50,000 piles were used, though not all probablyat the same time. Messikommer calculated that at Robenhausen over 100,000 were used. We find sometimes a different foundation. It consists of a solid mass of mud and stones, with erect and also horizontal logs binding the whole structure firmly together. This is evidently a ruder, simpler, and perhaps more primitive, mode of building. It was less suited to an open situation, exposed to heavy waves, and seems to occur more often in smaller lakes now often filled with peat.53Wauwyl and Nieberwyl are good illustrations of such a “Packwerkbau.” Some have considered them as originally floating rafts.
When the piles had been firmly driven, cross-pieces were laid over the top, and on this a “flooring” of smaller poles, or of halved logs or even split boards, whose interstices were probably filled with moss and clay, forming a solid and fairly even surface, on which the dwellings could be erected. The framework of the houses was of small piles, some of which have been found projecting considerably above the platforms.54“The size of the house is further marked out by boards forced in between the piles and resting edgeways on the platform, thus forming what at the present day we should callthe skirting boards (mop-boards) of the hut or rooms. The walls or sides were made of a wattle or hurdle work of small branches, woven in between the upright piles, and covered with a considerable thickness of loam or clay.” This is proved by numbers of pieces of clay half-burnt, or hardened in the fire, with the impressions of the wattle-work still remaining. These singularly illustrative specimens are found in nearly every settlement which has been destroyed by fire. The houses were rectangular except in a few cases. They were apparently thatched with straw or reeds. The hearths consisted of three or four stone slabs.
These houses were calculated by Messikommer at Robenhausen to have been about 27 by 22 feet, a very respectable size. One was excavated at Schussenried, whose side-walls and floor were fairly well preserved. This was a rectangle about 33 by 23 feet (10 by 7 metres), and was divided into two chambers. The front room, 6-1/2 by 4 metres, opened by a door facing south, and with remains of a hearth in one corner. The rear room, 6-1/2 by 5 metres, was without outer door, and was apparently a bedroom.55Beside these houses, or forming a part of them, were stalls for the cattle, granaries,and probably workshops. (The distribution of different remains is well shown in Keller’sLake Dwellings, I, p. 45.) The stone and bone implements, and the pottery of the lake-dwellers can be more conveniently considered in connection with those of other regions.
We pass now to the remains of animals and plants found here, especially in their relations to the food supply of the people.56Altogether about 70 species of animals have been discovered. Of these 10 are fish, 4 reptiles, 26 birds, and 30 mammals, of which 6 were probably domesticated. The largest of these were the greatCervus alcesor moose—sometimes called elk—the wild cattle, and the stag (Cervus elaphus). Bones of the stag and ox are very numerous and equal those of all others together. Of the horse very few remains are found until the Bronze period. Wild horses seem to have lived on in certain parts of Europe until a late date, but apparently they had emigrated almost altogether from this region. The horse of the Bronze Age was domesticated. The lion had left this region, but lingered on in the Balkans down to historic times. The brown bear and the wolf still roamed in the forest. In the oldest lake-dwellings the bones of wild animalsmake up a far larger proportion of the remains than in the latest ones.
We find a somewhat small dog (Canis familiaris palustris) closely resembling that of the Danish shell-heaps. It was apparently of the jackal type, and much like the modern Spitz. This would have been an excellent watch-dog to give warning of the approach of enemies. But at the close of the Neolithic, with the increase of flocks of sheep, a larger dog more closely related to the wolf seems to have spread widely through the country (Canis familiaris matris optimæ Juit). This form was much like, and probably the ancestor of, our present sheep-dogs. A third form (Canis intermedius) also occurs. The origin and relationships of the various forms of this oldest domesticated animal are still anything but clear. That they all go back to the jackal and the wolf rather than to a form like the Australian dingo, still seems to be most generally accepted. (But see Schenk.57)
Man gained the dog by domesticating the jackal and different species of wolves in different parts of the world and then by crossing, or, by a more or less unconscious selection, bred different varieties, until we have at present a chaos of intermingled forms. Something similarbut on a smaller scale was true of the domestic cattle. One kind of domestic cattle appears fully domesticated in the oldest lake-dwellings. It is unlike any wild European form. This is theBos brachyceros. It was almost certainly imported. Mingled with its forms we find those of theBos primigenius, a native of Europe and North Asia, but apparently not domesticated. This is the urus, which was common in Europe in Cæsar’s day, and lasted in central Europe until 1000 A. D. and still lingers in Poland.58This was a very large and powerful form with long spreading horns, whose domestication appears to have commenced toward the close of the Neolithic period. It is not improbable that it was domesticated, or at least tamed, independently in different countries at quite different times. Raising of cattle was at its height during the Bronze Age; afterward the results seem to decline and the cattle to degenerate.
One of the Vaphio vases of about 1500 B. C. represents the capture of large, long-horned cattle in a net, while the second shows similar animals tamed. Apparently the smaller and lighter brachyceros was first tamed, and this success led to a series of experiments with the larger and more difficult form.59
If we draw a line from northwestern Russia diagonally across Europe southwestward to the mouth of the Rhone, it will divide fairly well the distribution of the descendants of those two forms. To the eastward in Russia and Austria, also generally through Germany, and extending also along the shores of the Baltic, we find the large, heavy, usually long-horned descendants of the primigenius stock. The cattle of Spain, and southward into Africa, of France and England, are more of the short-horned, light-built, smaller brachyceros type. Holstein and Jersey are good representatives of the two types, though the Holsteins are, perhaps, a somewhat marked variety. Some regard the cattle of the Scotch highlands as the best representatives of theprimigeniustype, though reduced in size. This same type, on account of its size and endurance of harsh climate, has furnished the range cattle of our Western plains.
Two fairly distinct forms of swine occur in the lake-dwellings. The first is the so-called turbary pig (Sus scrofa palustris). This is a small form with comparatively long legs. It differs markedly from the wild boar, and was probably imported already domesticated. Being more or less left to feed and shift for itself, it may well have declined in size from its primitiveoriental ancestors. Remains of the larger European wild boar (Sus scrofa ferus L.) also occur from the beginning as products of the hunt. But during the Bronze period domesticated descendants of this variety grow numerous, and are crossed with the smaller turbary pig.
“The domestic sheep,” says Brehm, “is a quiet, gentle, patient, simple, will-less, cowardly, wearisome animal. It has no character. It understands and learns nothing; is incapable of helping itself.”60It is certainly absolutely dependent upon man for guidance and protection. This lies partly in its inherited nature and original surroundings, but suggests long domestication. Like the goat, it is originally a mountain form, but adapts itself readily to the dry herbage of the steppe. It is not a native of central Europe but introduced. It is much rarer than the goat in the oldest lake-dwellings, but gradually becomes more abundant, especially in the Bronze period.
The turbary sheep (Ovis aries palustris) is very small, with slender legs, long narrow skull, and bones somewhat like those of the goat. It was certainly not developed in Switzerland, and before it arrived there it had apparently been much modified by conditions of life or by crossing.ing. Its anatomical characteristics are made up of at least three wild forms. The first of these is the goat-like maned sheep (Ovis tragelaphus) ranging over the mountains of northern Africa, extending across into Abyssinia. This form seems to have been domesticated in Egypt before the middle of the fourth millennium. At a much later date, in Homeric times, herds of sheep of a similar form were kept in Greece. It was much larger than the turbary form.
The arkal (Ovis arkal) is the steppe sheep of central and western Asia. It is the ancestor of the oriental and African fat-tailed sheep. The western Asiatic forms seem to have developed the fine wool at the expense of the coarse hair, like that of the goat and of many other forms.
A third form is the Moufflon, of the mountains around the Mediterranean and of its larger islands—here probably introduced. Similar forms appear in Europe during the Bronze period.
Other species are found in different parts of Asia. The balance of probabilities seems to incline toward the view that the turbary sheep came into Europe from western and central Asia with other “turbary” forms, that it had been long domesticated, and either here or onits westward migration may have more or less crossed with the descendants of other varieties. The oldest domesticated goats seem to be descended from the Bezoar goat (Capra ægagrus), from the mountains of southwestern Asia.
The presence of oxen, sheep, and goats is enough to prove that the people must have practised agriculture to some extent to have kept these animals alive through the winter. That they were kept on the platform is shown by the presence of manure in the remains underneath. Whether this was used for fertilizer we do not know, nor their method of cultivating the ground. No agricultural implements have come down to us.
“The small-grained, six-rowed barley (Hordeum hexastichum sanctum) and the small lake-dwelling wheat (Triticum vulgare antiquorum) were the most ancient, most important, and most generally cultivated farinaceous seeds of our country. Next to them come the beardless compact wheat (T. vulg. compactum muticum) and the larger six-rowed barley (Hordeum hexastichum densum), with the two kinds of millet, the common millet (Panicum miliaceum) and the Italian millet (Setaria italica). The Egyptian wheat (Triticum turgidum L.), the two-rowed wheat (emmer,Triticum dicoccum Schr.),and the one-grained wheat (Trit. monococcum) were probably, like the two-rowed barley, only cultivated as experiments in a few places; and the spelt (Triticum spelta L.), which at present is one of the most important cereals, and the oat (Avena sativa L.) appeared later, not till the Bronze Age, while rye was entirely unknown among the lake-dwellings of Switzerland.”61
Oats occur in the Bronze period in western, middle, and northern Europe, in the Alpine lake-dwellings, and in the Danish islands. The ancient Egyptians and Hebrews, Indians and Chinese, did not cultivate them; they were raised in Asia Minor and America only since historic times. We remember that wheat and barley are mentioned in the oldest records of the Old Testament—as in Gideon’s barley loaf—but rye and oats not at all.
The grains seem to show a gradual improvement in productiveness from the very oldest settlements to those of the Bronze period. They are found charred and perfectly preserved wherever the houses were destroyed by fire. Even the ears and stalks have been saved for us in the same manner. Charred loaves of bread, and cake made of poppy-seeds, were also found. “Bread was made only of wheat andmillet, the latter with the addition of some grains of wheat, and, for the sake of flavoring it, with linseed also. Bread made of barley has not yet been found, and it is probable that barley was chiefly eaten boiled, or more probably parched or roasted.”62Flint sickles made of a long flake set at a right angle with the wooden handle have been found in Denmark, and others whose blade is formed by a row of small, sharp flints set in the edge of a wooden block occur in Egypt. The hand-mills or mealing-stones are very abundant, as might be expected.
The occurrence of the seeds of the Cretan catchfly (Silene cretica L.) is interesting, as it is not found wild in Germany or in southeastern Europe, but over all the countries of the Mediterranean. Similarly, the corn-bluebottle (Centaura cyanus L.) is found wild in Sicily. This seems to show that these plants came in with the wheat from Italy. But it is still possible that both Switzerland and Italy received them from a source somewhat or considerably farther east or south.
Apples and pears, split and dried, occur abundantly. Some of the apples are so large that they suggest a certain amount of care and cultivation. Sour crabapples, and the stones ofcherries, plums, and sloes are found accompanied by the seeds of the wild grape; of elderberries, raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries. Acorns, beechnuts, and hazelnuts were stored up. Besides the seeds of the poppy, already mentioned, those of caraway were used apparently to flavor the bread. Altogether some 170 plants have been discovered and determined from these localities.63
Basket-making and the weaving of mats from bast-fibres had led up to a highly developed weaver’s art. Few or no remains of wool have come down to us from Neolithic time, though it occurs in graves of the Bronze Age farther north. It would not preserve by charring, as all other lake-dwelling organic remains have been saved for us, and our failure to discover it is not surprising. We can hardly believe that these people did not use the wool of their flocks of sheep, or failed to felt the hair of their goats. But flax has been found in all stages of preparation and manufacture in great quantities. Says Messikommer of Robenhausen: “Every house had its loom.” We find not only threads, cords, and ropes, twine and nets, but cloth of varying pattern and design. Some pieces were so finely woven and well preservedthat their discoverers could hardly believe that they were not of modern make. Fringes and embroidery occur.64
Linen alone could hardly have furnished sufficient protection against the cold and dampness of the Swiss winter climate. The more primitive inhabitants had an abundance of furs. Garments of sheepskin were doubtless in use. And probably wool and goat’s-hair were woven or felted into outer garments. Dye-stuffs of black, yellow, red, and blue coloring furnished a variety of tints and shades.
Very few human bones have been found among those lake-dwelling remains; and only a few burial-places, or rather tombs, in the neighboring mainland. The discussion of their mode of burial and racial characteristics may well be deferred to a later chapter.
Of their religious cult we know almost nothing.65No idols or fetiches have been recognized. Certain “crescents” of clay, supported with the horns turned upward, have been considered by some as head-rests, for which purpose they are still used by certain African tribes. Others have considered them as representatives of the crescent moon; still others as conventionalized ox heads and horns. It seems highly probablethat they had some religious significance, but its exact nature is still uncertain. We shall return to them later.