The Prehistoric World or Vanished races Part 12

We have before us, then, a new culture and a new people. On the one hand is Paleolithic man, with his rude stone implements, merely chipped into shape--surrounded by many animals which have since vanished from the theater of life--inhabiting a country which, at its close at least, was more like Greenland of to-day than England or France. The scene completely changes, when the misty curtain of the past again rises and allows us to continue our investigations into primitive times.

We would naturally expect to find everywhere, connecting links between these two ages--the culture of the one gradually changing into the culture of the other. This, however, is not the case. The line of demarkation between the ages is everywhere plainly drawn; and, furthermore, we are learning that a very long time elapsed between the departure, or disappearance, of the Paleolithic tribes, and the arrival of their Neolithic successors. This is shown in a great many ways, and we will notice some of them. We learn that Neolithic man occasionally used caves as a place of habitation. In such cases there is nearly always a thick layer of stalagmite between the strata containing the Paleolithic implements and the Neolithic strata--though this stalagmite is unmistakable evidence of the lapse of many years, we can not determine how many, as we do not know the rate of formation.

This lapse of time is shown very plainly when we come to consider the changes wrought in the surface features of the country by the action of running water. We know that rain, running water, and frost, const.i.tuting what we call denuding forces, are constantly at work changing the surface of a country. We know that, in general, this change is slow. But great changes have been wrought between these two ages.

In the British Islands, we know that the rivers had time to very materially change the surface features of the land. The important rivers of Scotland had carved out channels one hundred feet deep in places; and along their courses, especially near their mouths, had plowed out and removed great quant.i.ties of glacial material--forming broad flats which became densely wooded before Neolithic man made his appearance on the scene. In some cases the entire surface of the land had been removed, leaving only knolls and hills of the old land surface. Examples of this occur on the east coast of England, and in what is known as the Fen-lands. The final retreat of the glaciers must have left the country covered with _debris._ After this had been largely denuded, the country became densely wooded. It was not until these changes had taken place, that Neolithic man wandered into Europe.<3>

But still another ground exists for claiming a long interval between these two ages, namely, the great changes that took place in the animal world of Europe during these two epochs. Many different species of animals characteristic of the Paleolithic Age vanished as completely from Europe as the rude tribes that hunted them, before the appearance of Neolithic tribes. But little change in the fauna of England has taken place in the last two thousand years. So it is obvious that the great change above-mentioned demands many centuries for its accomplishment.

Huge animals of the elephant kind, such as the mammoth, no longer crashed through the underbrush, or wallowed in the lakes. The roars of lions and tigers, that haunted the caves of early Europe, were no longer heard.<4> In short, there had disappeared forever from Europe the distinctly southern animals that diversified the fauna of Paleolithic times. Even the Arctic animals were banished to northern lat.i.tudes, or mountain heights.

We have dwelt to some length on the proofs of a long-extended time between these two ages. The more we reflect on these instances the more impressed are we with a sense of duration vast and profound, in which the great forests and gra.s.sy plains of Europe supported herds of wild animals all unvexed by the presence of man. We will only mention one more point and then pa.s.s on.

We have seen that the highest rank we can a.s.sign to Paleolithic man in the scale of civilization is Upper Savagism. But when Neolithic man appeared, he was in the middle status of Barbarism. The time, therefore, between the disappearance of Paleolithic man and the arrival of Neolithic man was long enough to enable primitive man to pa.s.s one entire ethnical period, that of Lower Barbarism. But this requires a very long period of time, probably several times as long as the entire series of years since Civilization first appeared, which is supposed to be in the neighborhood of five thousand years ago.<5>

We must now turn our attention to Neolithic man himself and learn what we can of his culture, and discover, if possible, what race it was that spread over Europe after it had been for so long a time an uninhabitable country. A few remarks by way of introduction will not be considered amiss.

We are learning that tribal organization, implying communism in living, is characteristic of prehistoric people.<6> Tribal organization sufficed to advance man to the very confines of civilization. We have no doubt but that this was the state of society amongst the Neolithic people. But this implies living in communities or villages. We need not picture to ourselves a country dotted with houses, the abodes of single families; such did not exist, but here and there were fortified villages.

Still another consequence follows from this tribal state of society.

There was no such thing as a strong central government. Each tribe obeyed its own chief, and a state of war nearly always existed between different tribes. Such we know was the state of things among the Indian tribes of America. Travelers tell us that it is so to-day in Africa.

Each tribe stood ready to defend itself or to make war on its neighbors.

One great point, therefore, in constructing a village, was to secure a place that could be easily defended.

Bearing these principles in mind, let us see what we can learn of their habitations. Owing to a protracted drouth, the water in the Swiss lakes was unusually low in the Winter of 1854, and the inhabitants of Meilen, on the Lake Zurich, took advantage of this state of affairs to throw up embankments some distance out from the old sh.o.r.e, and thus gain a strip of land along the coast. In carrying out this design, they found in the mud at the bottom of the lake a number of piles, some thrown down and others upright, fragments of rough pottery, bone and stone instruments, and various other relics.

Dr. Keller, president of the Zurich Antiquarian Society, was apprised of this discovery, and proceeded at once to examine the collection made and the place of discovery. He was not long in determining the prehistoric nature of the relics, and the true intent of the pile remains. He proved them to be supports for platforms, on which were erected rude dwellings, the platforms being above the surface of the water, and at some distance from the sh.o.r.e, with which they were connected by a narrow bridge.

Ill.u.s.tration of Lake Village, Switzerland.-------------

This was the first of a series of many interesting discoveries from which we have learned many facts as to Neolithic, times. The out we have introduced is an ideal restoration of one of these Swiss lake villages.

It needs but a glance to show how admirably placed it was for purposes of defense. Unless an enemy was provided with boats, the only way of approach was over the bridge. But the very fact that they resorted to lakes, where at the expense of great labor they erected their villages, is a striking ill.u.s.tration of the insecurity of the times.

This discovery once made, it is surprising what numbers of these ancient lake villages have been discovered. Switzerland abounds in large and small lakes, and in former times they must have been still more numerous, but in the course of years they have become filled up, and now exist only as peat bogs. But we now know that during the Neolithic Age the country was quite thickly inhabited, and these lakes were the sites of villages. Over two hundred have been found in Switzerland alone.

Fishermen had known of the existence of these piles long before their meaning was understood. Lake Geneva is one of the most famous of the Swiss lakes. Though in the main it is deep, yet around the sh.o.r.e there is a fringe of shallow water.

It was in this shallow belt that the villages were built. The sites of twenty-four settlements are known. We are told that on "calm days, when the surface of the water is unruffled, the piles are plainly visible.

Few of them now project more than two feet from the bottom, eaten away by the incessant action of the water. Lying among them are objects of bone, horn, pottery, and frequently even of bronze. So fresh are they, and so unaltered, they look as if they were only things of yesterday, and it seems hard to believe that they can have remained there for centuries."<7>

A lake settlement represents an immense amount of work for a people dest.i.tute of metallic tools. After settling on the locality, the first step would be to obtain the timbers. The piles were generally composed of the trunks of small-sized trees at that time flouris.h.i.+ng in Switzerland. But to cut down a tree with a stone hatchet is no slight undertaking. They probably used fire to help them. After the tree was felled it had to be cut off again at the right length, the branches lopped off, and one end rudely sharpened. It was then taken to the place and driven into the mud of the lake bottom. For this purpose they used heavy wooden mallets. It has been estimated that one of the settlements on Lake Constance required forty thousand piles in its construction.<8>

The platform which rested on these piles was elevated several feet above the surface of the water, so as to allow for the swash of the waves. It was composed of branches and trunks of trees banded together, the whole covered with clay. Sometimes they split the trees with wedges so as to make thick slabs. In some instances wooden pegs were used to fasten portions of the platform to the pilework.

As to the houses which were erected on these platforms, though they have utterly vanished, yet from a few remains we can judge something as to the mode of construction. They seem to have been formed of trunks of trees placed upright, one by the side of the other, and bound together by interwoven branches. This was then covered on both sides with two or three inches of clay. A plaster of clay and gravel formed the floor, and a few slabs of sandstone did duty for a fire-place. The roof was of bark, straw, or rushes. There does not seem to have been much of a plan used in laying out a settlement. As population increased other piles were added, and thus the village gradually extended. No one village would be likely to contain a great number of inhabitants. Calculations based on the area of one of the largest settlements in Lake Geneva, gives as a result a population of thirteen hundred, but manifestly nothing definite is known.

This brief description gives us an idea of a method of constructing villages which, as we shall soon see, extended all over Europe, though varied somewhat in detail. The condition of the remains indicate that these settlements were often destroyed by fire. At such times quant.i.ties of arms, implements, and household industries would have been lost in the water, and so preserved for our inspection.

This mode of building found such favor among the early inhabitants of Europe that it continued in use through the Neolithic Age, that of Bronze, and even into the age of Iron. Pa.s.sages here and there in ancient histories evidently refer to them. Though they have long since pa.s.sed away in Switzerland, the Spaniards found them in Mexico, and they are still to be seen in some of the isles of the Pacific. Remembering this, we need not be surprised if we find in one small lake settlements belonging to widely different ages. Here one of the Stone Age, there one of the Bronze, or even a confused mingling of what seems to be several ages in one settlement.<9>

There is scarcely a country in Europe that does not contain examples of lake villages. From their wide distribution we infer that a common race spread over the land. We will now mention some differences in construction discovered at some places, where, from the rocky nature of the bed of the lake, it was impossible to drive piles so as to form a firm foundation. They sometimes packed quant.i.ties of stone around the piles to serve as supports in a manner as here indicated. "In all probability the stones used were conveyed to the required spot by means of canoes, made of hollowed out trunks of trees. Several of these canoes may still be seen at the bottom of Lake Bienne, and one, indeed, laden with pebbles, which leads us to think it must have foundered with its cargo."<10>

Ill.u.s.tration of Foundation, Lake Village.------------

In some cases these heaps of stone and sticks rise to the surface of the water or even above it, the piles in such cases serving more to hold the ma.s.s together than as a support to the platform on which the huts were erected. This mode of construction could only be employed in small lakes. This makes in reality an artificial island, and seems to have been the favorite method of procedure in the British Islands. In Ireland and Scotland immense numbers of these structures are known. They are called crannogs. This cut represents a section of one in Ireland. Though they date back to the Neolithic Age, yet they so exactly meet the wants of a rude people that they were occupied down to historic times.

Ill.u.s.tration of Irish Crannog.---------------

The advantage of forming settlements where they could only be approached on one side were so great that other places than lakes were resorted to. Peat-bogs furnished nearly as secure a place of retreat as do lakes.

These have been well studied in Northern Italy. They do not present many new features. They were constructed like the lake villages, only they were surrounded by a marsh, and not by a lake. In some of the Irish bogs they first covered the surface of the bog with a layer of hazel bushes, and that by a layer of sand, and thus secured a firm surface.<11> In this case the villages were still further defended by a breastwork of rough spars, about five feet high. One of the houses of this group was found still in position, though it had been completely buried in peat.

No metal had been used in its construction. The timbers had been cut with a stone ax, and the explorer was even so fortunate as to find an ax, which exactly fitted many of the cuts observed on the timbers.

But we are not to suppose that lakes and bogs afforded the only sites of villages. They are found scattered all over the surface of the country, and, as we shall soon see, they show the same painstaking care to secure strong, easily defended positions. They have been generally spoken of as forts, to which the inhabitants resorted only in times of danger. We think, however, they were locations of villages, the customary places of abode. For this is in strict accordance with what we find to be the early condition of savage life in every part of the world.

Traces of these settlements on the main-land have been mostly obliterated by the cultivation of the soil during the many years that have elapsed since their Neolithic founders occupied them. In Switzerland the location of five of these villages are known. In all instances they occupied places very difficult of approach--generally precipitous sides on all but one or two. On the accessible sides ramparts defended them. The relics obtained are in all respects similar to those from the lake villages.<12>

Ill.u.s.tration of Fortified Camp, Cissbury.------------

Fortified inclosures have been described in Belgium. We are told, "They are generally established on points overhanging valleys, on a ma.s.s of rocks forming a kind of headland, which is united to the rest of the country by a narrow neck of land. A wide ditch was dug across this narrow tongue of land, and the whole camp was surrounded by a thick wall of stone, simply piled one upon another, without either mortar or cement." "One of these walls, when described, was ten feet thick, and the same in height." These intrenched positions were so well chosen that most of them continued to be occupied during the ages which followed.

The Romans occasionally utilized them for their camps. Over the whole inclosure of these ancient camps worked flints and remains of pottery have been found.<13> These fortified places have been well studied in the south of England.

What is known as the South-Downs in Suss.e.x is a range of hills of a general height of seven hundred feet. This section is about five miles wide and fifty miles long. Four rivers flow through these downs to the sea. In olden times their lower courses must have been deep inlets of the sea, thus dividing those hills into five groups, each separated from the other by a wide extent of water and marsh land. To the north of these hills was a vast expanse of densely wooded country. It is not strange, then, to find traces of numerous settlements among these hills.

As the surface soil is very thin, old embankments can still be traced.

The cut given is a representation of Cissbury, one of the largest of these camps. It incloses nearly sixty acres. The rampart varies according to the slope of the hill. Where the ascent was at all easy it was made double. Fortified camps are very numerous throughout the hill country. They vary, of course, in size, but the situation was always well chosen.<14>

As for the buildings themselves, or huts of the Neolithic people, we know but little. They were probably built much the same as the houses in the lake settlements. We meet with some strange modifications in England. Frequently within these ramparts we find circular pits or depressions in the ground. They are regarded as vestiges of habitations, and they must have been mainly under ground. "They occur singly and in groups, and are carried down to a depth of from seven to ten feet through the superficial gravel into the chalk, each pit, or cl.u.s.ter of pits, having a circular shaft for an entrance. At the bottom they vary from five to seven feet in diameter, and gradually narrow to two and a half or three feet in diameter in the upper part. The floors were of chalk, sometimes raised in the center, and the roof had been formed of interlaced sticks, coated with clay imperfectly burned."<15>

In the north of Scotland, instead of putting them under ground, they built them on the natural surface, and then built a mound over them all.

In appearance this was scarcely distinguishable from a mound, but on digging in we discover a series of large chambers, built generally with stones of considerable size, and converging toward the center, where an opening appears to have been left for light and ventilation. In some instances the mound was omitted, and we have simply a cl.u.s.ter of joining huts, with dry, thick walls. These have been appropriately named "Bee-hive Houses."<16>

We can form a very good idea of Neolithic Europe from what we have learned as to their habitations. A well-wooded country, abounding in lakes and marshes, quite thickly settled, but by a savage people, divided into many tribes, independent of and hostile to each other.

The lakes were fringed with their peculiar settlements; they are to be noticed in the marshes, and on commanding heights are still others. The people were largely hunters and fishers, but, as we shall soon see, they practised a rude husbandry and had a few domestic animals. Such was the condition of Europe long before the Greek and Latin tribes lit the beacon fires of civilization in the south.

It is evident that the builders of the lake settlements and the fortified villages were an intelligent and industrious people, though their scale in civilization was yet low. Their various implements of bone, horn, and stone display considerable advance over the rude articles of the Drift.

Ill.u.s.tration of Neolithic Axes.--------------------

One of the most important implements was the ax. The Paleolithic hatchet, we remember, was rude, ma.s.sive, and only roughly chipped into shape, and was intended to be held in the hand. The Neolithic ax was a much better made one, and was furnished with a handle. They were enabled to accomplish a great deal with such axes. "Before it, aided by fire, the trees of the forest fell to make room for the tiller of the ground, and by its sharp edge wood became useful for the manufacture of various articles and implements indispensable for the advancement of mankind in culture."<17> These axes vary in size and finish. As a general thing they are ground to a sharp, smooth edge, but not always, nor were they always furnished with a handle.

Some axes are found with a hole bored in them, through which to pa.s.s a handle. These perforated axes are found in considerable numbers, and some have denied that they could be produced without the aid of metal.