Primitive Man Part 4

"This argument is perhaps the only one which has been brought forward with any degree of precision, and it is often recurred to. Is it, on this account, more demonstrative? Let the reader judge for himself.

"We may, in the first place, remark that Sir C. Lyell does not venture to p.r.o.nounce affirmatively as to the high antiquity of the human remains discovered by Dr. Fuhlrott, and that he looked upon them, at the most, as contemporary with the Engis skull, in which the Caucasian type of head was reproduced.

"Let us, however, admit that the Neanderthal skull belongs to the remote antiquity to which it has been a.s.signed; what, then, is in reality the significance of this skull? Is it actually a link between the head of the man and that of the ape? And does it not find some a.n.a.logy in comparatively modern races?

"Many writings have been published on these questions, and, as it appears to me, some light has gradually been thrown upon the subject.

There is no doubt that this skull is really remarkable for the enormous size of its superciliary ridges, the length and narrowness of the bony case, the slight elevation of the top of the skull. But these features are found to be much less exceptional than was at first supposed, in default of any means of inst.i.tuting a just comparison; very far, indeed, from justifying the approximation which some have endeavoured to make, this skull is, in all its characteristics, essentially human. Mr. Busk, in England, has pointed out the great affinity which is established, by the prominence of the superciliary ridges and the depression of the upper region, between certain Danish skulls from Borreby and the Neanderthal skull. Dr. Barnard Davis has described the still greater similarities existing between this very _fossil_ and a skull in his collection. Gratiolet forwarded to the Museum the skull of an idiot of the present time, which was almost identical with it in everything, although in slighter proportions, &c.

"The following appears to me to be decisive:

"In spite of its curious characteristics, the Neanderthal skull none the less belonged to an individual, who, to judge by other bones which have been found, diverged but little from the average type of the present Germanic races, and by no means approximated to that of the ape.

"Is it probable, proceeding even on the cla.s.s of ideas which I am opposing, that in a being in a state of transition between man and the anthropomorphous apes, the body would have become entirely human in its character, whilst the head presented its simial peculiarities? If a fact like this is admitted, does it not render the hypothesis absolutely worthless?

"Notwithstanding all the discussion to which these curious remains have given rise, it appears to me impossible to look upon them in any other light than as the remains of an individuality, exceptional, no doubt, but clearly belonging to the human species, and, in addition to this, to the Celtic race, one of the branches of our Aryan stock. M. Pruner-Bey appears to me to have placed this fact beyond all question by the whole ma.s.s of investigations which he has published on this subject. The most convincing proofs are based on the very great similarity which may be noticed in a Celtic skull taken from a tumulus in Poitou to the skull which has become so well known and, indeed, so celebrated owing to the writings of Doctor Schaaffhausen. This similarity is not merely external. An internal cast taken from one skull fits perfectly into the interior of the other. It was, therefore, the _brains_ and not merely the _skulls_ which bore a resemblance to one another. The proof appears to me to be complete, and, with the learned author of this work, I feel no hesitation in concluding that the Neanderthal skull is one of Celtic origin.

"After all, neither experience nor observation have as yet furnished us with the slightest data with regard to man at his earliest origin.

Science, therefore, which pretends to solidity of character, must put this problem on one side till fresh information is obtained. We really approach nearer to the truth when we confess our ignorance than when we attempt to disguise it either to ourselves or others.

"With regard to the simial origin of man, it is nothing but pure hypothesis, or rather nothing but a mere _jeu d'esprit_ which everything proves utterly baseless, and in favour of which no solid fact has as yet been appealed to."

In dealing with this question in a more general point of view, we must add that the most enlightened science declares to us in unmistakable accents, that species is immutable, and that no animal species can be derived from another; they may change, but all bear witness to an independent creation. This truth, which has been developed at length by M. de Quatref.a.ges in his numerous works, is a definitive and scientific judgment which must decide this question as far as regards any unprejudiced minds.

CHAPTER II.

Man in the condition of Savage Life during the Quaternary Epoch--The Glacial Period, and its Ravages on the Primitive Inhabitants of the Globe--Man in Conflict with the Animals of the Quaternary Epoch--The Discovery of Fire--The Weapons of Primitive Man--Varieties of Flint-hatchets--Manufacture of the earliest Pottery--Ornamental objects at the Epoch of the Great Bear and the Mammoth.

After this dissertation, which was necessary to confute the theory which gives such a degrading explanation of our origin, we must contemplate man at the period when he was first placed upon the earth, weak and helpless, in the midst of the inclement and wild nature which surrounded him.

However much our pride may suffer by the idea, we must confess that, at the earliest period of his existence, man could have been but little distinguished from the brute. Care for his natural wants must have absorbed his whole being; all his efforts must have tended to one sole aim--that of insuring his daily subsistence.

At first, his only food must have been fruits and roots; for he had not as yet invented any weapon wherewith to destroy wild animals. If he succeeded in killing any creatures of small size he devoured them in a raw state, and made a covering of their skins to shelter himself against the inclemency of the weather. His pillow was a stone, his roof was the shadow of a wide-spreading tree, or some dark cavern which also served as a refuge against wild beasts.

For how many ages did this miserable state last? No one can tell. Man is an improvable being, and indefinite progress is the law of his existence. Improvement is his supreme attribute; and this it is which gives him the pre-eminence over all the creatures which surround him.

But how wavering must have been his first steps in advance, and how many efforts must have been given to the earliest creation of his mind and to the first work of his hands--doubtless some shapeless attempt in which we nowadays, perhaps, should have some difficulty in recognising the work of any intelligent being!

Towards the commencement of the quaternary epoch, a great natural phenomenon took place in Europe. Under the influence of numerous and varied causes, which up to the present time have not been fully recognised, a great portion of Europe became covered with ice, on the one hand, making its way from the poles down to the most southern lat.i.tudes, and, on the other, descending into the plains from the summits of the highest mountain chains. Ice and ice-fields a.s.sumed a most considerable extension. As all the lower parts of the continent were covered by the sea, there were only a few plateaux which could afford a refuge to man and animals flying from this deadly cold. Such was the _Glacial Period_, which produced the annihilation of so many generations of animals, and must have equally affected man himself, so ill-defended against this universal and sudden winter.

Man, however, was enabled to resist the attacks of revolted nature.

Without doubt, in this unhappy period, he must have made but little progress, even if his intellectual development were not completely stopped. At all events, the human species did not perish. The glacial period came to an end, the ice-fields shrank back to their original limits, and Nature rea.s.sumed its primitive aspect.

When the ice had gradually retired into the more northern lat.i.tudes, and had become confined to the higher summits, a new generation of animals--another _fauna_, as naturalists call it--made its appearance on the globe. This group of animals, which had newly come into being, differed much from those that had disappeared in the glacial cataclysm.

Let us cast an inquiring glance on these strange and now extinct creatures.

First we have the mammoth (_Elephas primigenius_), or the woolly-haired and maned elephant, carcases of which were found, entire and in good preservation, in the ice on the coasts of Siberia. Next comes the rhinoceros with a complete nasal septum (_Rhinoceros tichorhinus_), likewise clad in a warm and soft fur, the nose of which is surmounted with a remarkable pair of horns. Then follow several species of the hippopotamus, which come as far north as the rivers of England and Russia; a bear of great size inhabiting caverns (_Ursus spelaeus_), and presenting a projecting forehead and a large-sized skull; the cave lion or tiger (_Felis spelaea_), which much surpa.s.sed in strength the same animals of the existing species; various kinds of hyaenas (_Hyaena spelaea_), much stronger than those of our epoch; the bison or aurochs (_Biso europaeus_), which still exists in Poland; the great ox, the Urus of the ancients (_Bos primigenius_); the gigantic Irish elk (_Megaceros hibernicus_), the horns of which attained to surprising dimensions.

Other animals made their appearance at the same epoch, but they are too numerous to mention; among them were some of the Rodent family. Almost all these species are now extinct, but man certainly existed in the midst of them.

The mammoth, elephant, rhinoceros, stag, and hippopotamus were then in the habit of roaming over Europe in immense herds, just as some of these animals still do in the interior of Africa. These animals must have had their favourite haunts--spots where they a.s.sembled together in thousands; or else it would be difficult to account for the countless numbers of bones which are found acc.u.mulated at the same spot.

Before these formidable bands, man could dream of nothing but flight. It was only with some isolated animal that he could dare to engage in a more or less unequal conflict. Farther on in our work, we shall see how he began to fabricate some rough weapons, with a view of attacking his mighty enemies.

The first important step which man made in the path of progress was the acquisition of fire. In all probability, man came to the knowledge of it by accident, either by meeting with some substance which had been set on fire by lightning or volcanic heat, or by the friction of pieces of wood setting a light to some very inflammable matter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 7.--The Production of Fire.]

In order to obtain fire, man of the quaternary epoch may have employed the same means as those made use of by the American aborigines, at the time when Christopher Columbus first fell in with them on the sh.o.r.es of the New World--means which savage nations existing at the present day still put in practice. He rubbed two pieces of dry wood one against the other, or turned round and round with great rapidity a stick sharpened to a point, having placed the end of it in a hole made in the trunk of a very dry tree (fig. 7).

As among the savages of the present day we find certain elementary mechanisms adapted to facilitate the production of fire, it is not impossible that these same means were practised at an early period of the human race. It would take a considerable time to set light to two pieces of dry wood by merely rubbing them against one another; but if a bow be made use of, that is, the chord of an arc fixed firmly on a handle, so as to give a rapid revolution to a cylindrical rod of wood ending in a point which entered into a small hole made in a board, the board may be set on fire in a few minutes. Such a mode of obtaining fire may have been made use of by the men who lived in the same epoch with the mammoth and other animals, the species of which are now extinct.

The first rudiments of combustion having been obtained, so as to serve, during the daytime, for the purposes of warmth and cooking food, and during the night, for giving light, how was the fire to be kept up? Wood from the trees that grew in the district, or from those which were cast up by the currents of the rivers or sea; inflammable mineral oils; resin obtained from coniferous trees; the fat and grease of wild animals; oil extracted from the great cetaceans;--all these substances must have a.s.sisted in maintaining combustion, for the purposes both of warmth and light. The only fuel which the Esquimaux of the present day have either to warm their huts or light them during the long nights of their gloomy climate, is the oil of the whale and seal, which, burnt in a lamp with a short wick, serves both to cook their food and also to warm and illumine their huts.

Even, nowadays, in the Black Forest (Duchy of Baden), instead of candles, long splinters of very dry beech are sometimes made use of, which are fixed in a horizontal position at one end and lighted at the other. This forms an economical lamp, which is really not to be despised.

We have also heard of the very original method which is resorted to by the inhabitants of the Faroe Isles in the northern seas of Europe, in order to warm and light up their huts. This method consists in taking advantage of the fat and greasy condition of the young Stormy Petrel (Mother Carey's Chicken), so as to convert its body into a regular lamp. All that is necessary is to draw a wick through its body, projecting at the beak, which when lighted causes this really animal candle to throw out an excellent light until the last greasy morsel of the bird is consumed.

This bird is also used by the natives of the Isles as a natural fuel to keep up their fires and cook other birds.

Whatever may have been the means which were made use of by primitive man in order to procure fire, either the simple friction of two pieces of wood one against the other, continued for a long time, the _bow_, or merely a stick turning round rapidly by the action of the hand, without any kind of mechanism--it is certain that the acquisition of fire must be cla.s.sed amongst the most beautiful and valuable discoveries which mankind has made. Fire must have put an end to the weariness of the long nights. In the presence of fire, the darkness of the holes and caverns in which man made his first retreat, must have vanished away. With the aid of fire, the most rigorous climates became habitable, and the damp which impregnated the body of man or his rough garments, made of the skin of the bear or some long-haired ruminant, could be evaporated. With fire near them, the danger arising from ferocious beasts must have much diminished; for a general instinct leads wild animals to dread the light and the heat of a fire. Buried, as they were, in the midst of forests infested with wild beasts, primitive men might, by means of a fire kept alight during the night, sleep in peace without being disturbed by the attacks of the huge wild beasts which prowled about all round them.

Fire, too, gave the first starting-point to man's industry. It afforded means to the earliest inhabitants of the earth for felling trees, for procuring charcoal, for hardening wood for the manufacture of their rudimentary implements, and for baking their primitive pottery.

Thus, as soon as man had at his disposal the means for producing artificial heat, his position began to improve, and the kindly flame of the hearth became the first centre round which the family circle was const.i.tuted.

Ere long man felt the need of strengthening his natural powers against the attacks of wild beasts. At the same time he desired to be able to make his prey some of the more peaceable animals, such as the stag, the smaller kinds of ruminants, and the horse. Then it was that he began to manufacture weapons.

He had remarked, spread about the surface of the ground, certain flints, with sharp corners and cutting edges. These he gathered up, and by the means of other stones of a rather tougher nature, he broke off from them pieces, which he fas.h.i.+oned roughly in the shape of a hatchet or hammer.

He fixed these splinters into split sticks, by way of a handle, and firmly bound them in their places with the tendons of an animal or the strong stalks of some dried plant. With this weapon, he could, if he pleased, strike his prey at a distance.

When man had invented the bow and chipped out flint arrow-heads, he was enabled to arrest the progress of the swiftest animal in the midst of his flight.

Since the time when the investigations with regard to primitive man have been set on foot in all countries, and have been energetically prosecuted, enormous quant.i.ties have been found of these chipped flints, arrow-heads, and various stone implements, which archaeologists designate by the common denomination of _hatchets_, in default of being able, in some cases, to distinguish the special use for which they had been employed. Before going any further, it will be necessary to enter into some details with regard to these flint implements--objects which are altogether characteristic of the earliest ages of civilisation.

For a long time past chipped stones of a somewhat similar character have been met with here and there in several countries, sometimes on the surface of, and sometimes buried deeply in, the ground; but no one understood what their significance was. If the common people ever distinguished them from ordinary stones, they attached to them some superst.i.tious belief. Sometimes they called them "thunder-stones,"

because they attributed to them the power of preserving from lightning those who were in possession of them. It was not until the middle of the present century that naturalists and archaeologists began to comprehend the full advantage which might be derived from the examination of these chipped stones, in reconstructing the lineaments of the earliest of the human race and in penetrating, up to a certain point, into their manners, customs, and industry. These stone-hatchets and arrow-heads are, therefore, very plentiful in the present day in collections of antiquities and cabinets of natural history.

Most of these objects which are found in Europe are made of flint, and this circ.u.mstance may be easily explained. Flint must have been preferred as a material, on account both of its hardness and its mode of cleavage, which may be so readily adapted to the will of the workman.

One hard blow, skilfully applied, is sufficient to break off, by the mere shock, a sharp-edged flake of a blade-like shape. These sharp-edged blades of silex might serve as knives. Certainly they would not last long in use, for they are very easily notched; but primitive men must have been singularly skilful in making them.

Although the shapes of these stone implements are very varied, they may all be cla.s.sed under a certain number of prevailing types; and these types are to be found in very different countries. The flint hatchets are at first very simple although irregular in their shape; but they gradually manifest a much larger amount of talent exhibited in their manufacture, and a better judgment is shown in adapting them to the special uses for which they were intended. The progress of the human intellect is written in ineffaceable characters on these tablets of stone, which, defended as they were, by a thick layer of earth, bid defiance to the injuries of time.

Let us not despise these first and feeble efforts of our primitive forefathers, for they mark the date of the starting-point of manufactures and the arts. If the men of the stone age had not persevered in their efforts, we, their descendants, should never have possessed either our palaces or our masterpieces of painting and sculpture. As Boucher de Perthes says, "The first man who struck one pebble against another to make some requisite alteration in its form, gave the first blow of the chisel which has resulted in producing the Minerva and all the sculpture of the Parthenon."

Archaeologists who have devoted their energies to investigating the earliest monuments of human industry, have found it necessary to be on their guard against certain errors, or rather wilful deceptions, which might readily pervert their judgment and deprive their discoveries of all character of authenticity. There is, in fact, a certain cla.s.s of persons engaged in a deceptive manufacture who have taken a delight in misleading archaeologists by fabricating apocryphal flint and stone implements, in which they drive a rather lucrative trade. They a.s.sert, without the least scruple, the high antiquity of their productions, which they sell either to inexperienced amateurs, who are pleased to put them in their collections duly labelled and ticketed, or--which is a more serious matter--to workmen who are engaged in making excavations in fossiliferous beds. These workmen hide the fict.i.tious specimens in the soil they are digging, using every requisite precaution so as to have the opportunity of subsequently extracting them and fingering a reward for them from some too trusting naturalist. These imitations are, moreover, so cleverly made, that it sometimes requires well-practised eyes to recognise them; but they may be recognised with some degree of facility by the following characteristics:--