The New Stone Age in Northern Europe Part 5

When Europe changed from tundra to forest man became largely a fisherman, more or less settled at some favorable spot, and collecting his vegetable food in all directions. The same may well have been true of life at this early date in Persia. The man hunted or fished, the woman and the children gathered all kinds of animals and plant food, berries and other fruits, acorns and other nuts. One of the richest sources of food must have been the roots, tubers, and other underground stems. If there were any patches of richly seeded gra.s.ses or grains on the near-by glade or hill, we may be sure that the woman did not fail to beat off the ripe seed with a stick, and carry it home with her. The primitive family was not dainty or particular in its appet.i.te. The women were the first botanists, the first to notice the nutritive, medicinal, or poisonous qualities of plants, and the first physicians.[82]

When she turned homeward with her load of spoil, some berries, seeds, and small bulbs doubtless fell to the ground and escaped her notice.

These grew and flourished in the richer soil around the hut or shelter, for all the garbage could not have acc.u.mulated in the hut. Some unusually observing woman noticed this, and protected the plants, or even cultivated them a little with her digging-stick, and pulled out some of the largest smothering weeds. She began to plant a few others, and gradually started a garden. The garden is older than the farm, and hoe and digging-stick vastly older than the plough. This woman had discovered, and almost created, a new world of science and culture which was to revolutionize life.

Rice growing wild in large fields under suitable conditions is still gathered by all savages. This grain needed no preparation except boiling, while wheat and barley must be crushed or ground between stones, probably used at first for grinding dry nuts. Peas and beans, many vetches, and other members of this family so characteristic of the dryer uplands, were gathered very early, and may have been cultivated before wheat. Melons and many of the gourds always must have been eaten.

We shall notice later that the zone of Persia and Asia Minor lay on the boundary line between two great botanical provinces, a northern and a southern, and furnished a very wide range of plants for this earliest experiment station.[83] A great variety of plants were tested sooner or later, and only a few of the very best and most capable of improvement have been retained to our day. On the steppe at a later date wheat and barley were most profitable, and most widely cultivated. But even here hoe-culture was for a long time the only mode. It still exists in Africa, Asia, and j.a.pan; and was the only mode of culture known in America at the time of its discovery. Hoe-culture was at first, and has generally remained, woman's work; ploughing with cattle was a man's job. This had far-reaching results to which we must return in a later chapter.

But we must not think that the Iranian plateau, with its great zone of piedmont steppe stretching eastward and westward along its northern border across the continent of Asia, was the only place where agriculture could start and reach a high degree of development in ancient times. Its possibility lay in the habit of the woman of collecting the vegetable food and smaller animals, while the men hunted and fished. Useful food plants furnis.h.i.+ng large amounts of food are to be found in all continents, and differ markedly in different soils and climatic zones. Hence even the beginnings of agriculture were probably not confined to any one region, but were wide-spread, manifold, and independent. The Chinese migrating eastward and southeastward down the great river valleys from eastern Turkestan may have carried with them the cultivation of wheat, or adopted it independently. The rice culture of China may have been borrowed from India or independently evolved.

India and the Malay Archipelago and Africa have every one its own agriculture, of whose origin and early development we know nothing.

But western Asia, or more precisely the Iranian plateau, had another piedmont region beside the zone stretching along its northern border.

This second piedmont zone of gra.s.s-land, or oasis, as Breasted has pointed out, bends in the form of a horseshoe along the western slope of the Iranian plateau, then northward and westward around the headwaters of the Tigris and the Euphrates, and southward through Syria.[84] Here it dries out in the great Syrian and Arabian deserts. But these also, as well as the Arabian plateau stretching along the Red Sea, may have been well watered and inhabitable in early post-glacial time. The Arabian plateau and its piedmont zone in those days may well have been an independent centre of agricultural development, which gave place to the nomadism so characteristic of the Semitic peoples only at a later date.

Of the early history of Arabia we are still completely ignorant. But in the twilight of history we see those Semites coming into the Mesopotamian valley from the west while the Sumerians entered from the east. Those two streams of migration, mingling, founded the great Babylonian Empire, to which all oriental peoples looked up with an awe and reverence, as well as fear, which we can scarcely appreciate.

Evidently, and this is the fact of chief importance to us, parts of the nearer east were highly civilized before anything better than savagery had developed in northern Europe.

But far older than these cities of the Mesopotamian river valleys is the culture of the forests, glades, lakes, and riversides of the plateaus.

Evidence seems steadily to acc.u.mulate that here we are to seek for the beginnings of agriculture and the domestication of animals which were slowly to change the face of the earth and the life and character of man.

Hoe-tillage of the ground is evidently far older than cattle-raising or nomadic life. It had been brought to Anau before 8000 B. C., and had probably already been practised at Susa and elsewhere thousands of years earlier. But we cannot help asking whether other plants may not have been cultivated long before cereals. Roots and tubers are much more conspicuous than the smaller grains. These underground storehouses of nutriment adapted to give the plant a quick and sure start, during a short spring period of growth and flowering, are abundant everywhere.

They still form the staple crop in many parts of the world. We remember the potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, the ca.s.sava, and a host of others.

In our northern regions we still cultivate beets, turnips, and carrots, though now becoming more and more food for cattle. These plants also are less closely limited to the steppes and plateaus. They occur all through the mountain or sh.o.r.e regions, and for this reason would have been likely to attract the attention of "collectors."

Primitive woman had no plough, only the digging-stick, the agricultural implement of the Australians. Later they learned to make a hoe, sometimes out of a tine of deer's horn, sometimes of stone or other material, something half-way between a hoe and a pick. With such an implement a fair amount of soil could be broken up and well stirred.

When domestic animals were introduced into Africa the plough followed only in the eastern regions; all through the rest of Africa the old hoe-culture held its own. Europeans introduced the plough into America.

As a means of breaking up the ground the plough is infinitely superior; for tillage and cultivation the hoe is far more useful. When wheat has once been sown it cares for itself; further cultivation is unnecessary--it is the lazy man's crop. Perhaps that, with a touch of the spur of necessity, persuaded the male to undertake ploughing. When the plough was invented many vegetables formerly cultivated probably became less profitable or attractive, and were given up. A revolution took place in agriculture. Probably the plough was at first dragged by women.

It is impossible to say just when it was invented. It was used during the Bronze period, for it is represented in rock-carvings of that age.

Some stone ploughshares may be Neolithic.

Studying European Neolithic agriculture in the light of the methods of savage and barbarous peoples, or even of our pioneer ancestors, we imagine them living on the border of the forests which furnished food and wood for buildings and implements. The first step was to burn and clear a place where the undergrowth was not too heavy, and to break up the soil with pick or hoe. Here the patch of grain was sowed. The soil fertilized by the ashes gave him a fair crop, but became exhausted after a few years of cultivation, and he was compelled to break up a new field. Some investigators have thought that the lake-dwellers used the manure from their cattle on their fields, but in most parts of Europe cultivation of the soil was probably crude and superficial. On the chalk downs of England, chief places of settlement by Neolithic peoples in this region, we find terraces and narrow strips which may have been prepared at this time, though their age is very uncertain. They often are of a size and form not well adapted to plough-culture. They have a look of permanent occupation. These may well have been fertilized. The evidence is very uncertain. When the loess soil was of fair depth cultivation may have gone on for many years without fertilizers of any sort.

The primitive plough was hardly more than a pointed stout branch or stub of a tree, whose longer fork was fastened to the yoke. It made a furrow triangular in cross-section, broad at the top and narrowing to an edge at the bottom. It did not "turn" a strip, and between two furrows a long ridge was left unbroken. Even in Roman times cross-ploughing was common or usual. Even this rude culture needed the strength of cattle to draw the plough. The plough is a.s.sociated in our minds with oxen, and the first man who made his cow, instead of his wife, draw the plough was a great benefactor.

Even the domestication of cattle was less easy than it seems at first sight. Wild animals rarely reproduce in captivity. Pumpelly thinks that the way toward the domestication of our larger cattle may have been paved by a long period of drought driving them from the steppe into the better-watered oases, and thus into a.s.sociation with man. But this could hardly have been true of the mountain sheep and goats, on which man may well have experimented before he attempted the more difficult task of domesticating the larger, more powerful, and less manageable _Bos namadicus_. How did man hit upon the plan of castrating the bull and thus changing this intractable, ugly beast into the docile and patient ox? There seems to be a good amount of plausibility in Hehn's brilliant suggestion that this may have come about in connection with some ancient systems of religious rites and beliefs.[85] There is nothing impossible or very improbable in this view. But the very brilliancy of the conjecture and the clearness with which it is expressed, and the wealth of learning used to support it, warns us against too ready acceptance. We can only confess our complete ignorance and wait for future discoveries as patiently as we can.

At present nearly all our knowledge of what was going on in this dim and remote past must be gained by a study of savages still holding the customs of the past in a somewhat or greatly modified form and spirit.

Certain very general inferences may be made without great danger. But to frame clear and exact conceptions of life in these remote ages from these sources would demand a union of the boldest genius with the most wary caution. All these peoples have changed greatly during past millennia both for better and worse, usually probably in the latter direction. Customs have all been modified by changed conditions, surroundings, and inferences. It is exceedingly difficult to distinguish between what is really primitive and what is degenerate, perhaps of comparatively recent origin. The problem bristles with tantalizing questions, which tempt us to spin fascinating hypotheses all the more dangerous because of their attractiveness and apparent simplicity. Our great need is new facts and discoveries, and a clearer knowledge and understanding of old ones.

We may well connect and condense the chief results of our study in this chapter. It seems to be clear that a culture essentially similar to that of the European lake dwellers existed at Anau, in the piedmont zone, a little north or northeast of the Iranian plateau, with which it had trade relations. The oldest turbary forms of domesticated animals appear here at least 1,500 years before the founding of the Swiss lake dwellings. They were mostly introduced from some mountain region, the nearest probable source being the Iranian plateau, but their first domestication may have taken place equally well elsewhere in western or central Asia, or even in Arabia. Susa shows similar remains extending back into a far more remote past; and the similarity or kins.h.i.+p of the pottery in the oldest strata at Susa and Anau and elsewhere leads us to believe that a culture similar in other respects also was widely distributed at this time. We can hardly doubt that agriculture was practised by the founders of all these settlements.

We can only frame conjectures as to the origin of agriculture. It seems to have been introduced by the women of hunting and fis.h.i.+ng tribes. The first agricultural implement was probably the digging-stick, which was followed by the hoe. Hoe-culture is still common in Asia and Africa.

Finally, during the first part of the Bronze period, or perhaps somewhat earlier, the plough drawn by cattle and guided by a man superseded the hoe as a means of breaking up the soil for the culture of grain.

CHAPTER VI

MEGALITHS

Megaliths, those great stone monuments of prehistoric time, have always excited the wonder and interest of all observers.[86] Under the name of dolmens or stone chambers, cromlechs or stone circles, tumuli or mounds, they form a striking contrast to the insignificant and ephemeral thatched huts of wood and clay which formed the homes of the living.

These chambers, especially those of later date, are often accompanied by circles or radiating lines of rude pillars, the Menhirs or standing stones. In the more fertile and densely populated regions the great blocks have been removed and used in the foundations of buildings. They must once have been far more numerous. But Dechelette reports nearly 4,500 as still existing in France;[87] England contains almost or quite as many; and they are very numerous in Denmark and Sweden. We will mainly follow Sophus Muller in his study of these monuments in Denmark.[88]

The simplest, and apparently the oldest, dolmens are the small rectangular chambers consisting of four stones set up on edge with one large one forming the roof. These are usually between 5 and 7 feet in length, 2 to 3-1/2 feet wide, and 3 to 5 feet in height. One of the end stones is shorter, leaving an opening under the roof through which one may reach or even crawl into the chamber. Somewhat larger chambers of the same type and having five or six wall stones are not uncommon.

Even these small chambers were intended for long use, and to contain more than one body; some contain the remains of a dozen. The bones lie in layers covered with flint chips, or in little heaps where they have been collected to give room for new interments. Many of the smaller chambers were too short to allow the body to lie fully extended; in some it was evidently placed in a sitting posture leaning against the wall.

These smaller dolmens were surrounded by a heap of earth reaching nearly to the top of the side stones, but not covering the roof, and hardly deserving to be called a tumulus. The roof was usually composed of one great stone, flat below but arching above and forming a sort of monument. In one chamber this roof-stone is eleven feet long and three feet thick. On each side of the doorway a stone is often set upright to keep back the earth of the tumulus, and a covering stone may be laid across them. Here we have a form intermediate between the small dolmen without entrance-stones and the large chambers, which we shall consider later.

The earthern tumulus may be round in outline or elliptical, forming the long grave--the _Hunnenbett_ of popular German speech. The round tumuli rarely exceed 40 feet in diameter. They were as a rule surrounded by a circle of upright stones, now generally removed. The long tumuli are rarely more than 5 or 6 feet high, and 20 to 30 feet wide. The length varies greatly: usually between 50 and 100 feet, but infrequently from 100 to 200 feet; one is 500 feet long with over 100 of the marginal stones still standing.

The chambers in the round and long tumuli in Denmark are very similar, but in the long tumuli there are usually two or more dolmens, often symmetrically located. In other cases it looks as if a tumulus had been lengthened to cover chambers added later. A large amount of variety in such details is not surprising. More rarely we find two or more small tumuli side by side, each with one or two chambers. That those smaller dolmens or chambers are the oldest is suggested not only by their simplicity but even more by the pottery and implements contained in them, though this is not invariably true, as the small dolmens continued in use throughout the Neolithic period, in some regions far later. The gifts which they contain are usually not numerous and often very scanty.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "CROUCHING BURIAL" (HOCKER-BESTATTUNG) ADLERBORG, NEAR WORMS]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MENHIR, CARNAC, BRITTANY]

[Ill.u.s.tration: DOLMEN, HAGA, ISLAND OF BORUST]

The wide distribution of these simplest stone monuments is exceedingly interesting. They occur in Denmark and Sweden, in North Germany and Holland, in Great Britain and France, Portugal and Spain, in North Africa, in the aegean Islands, in Palestine and farther eastward, in Thrace and Crimea, along the eastern sh.o.r.e of the Black Sea. They are very numerous in India.[89] Throughout this wide extent they agree not only in general form and structure, but also in certain interesting details. For instance, the oriental and southern dolmens frequently have a round opening in the upper part of the slab closing the entrance, corresponding to the wide opening above the door of the Scandinavian dolmens. The difference in the form of the opening may be explained by the difficulty of cutting a circular opening in the hard granite rocks of the northern area. There was a general unity of thought in essentials, especially in those oldest forms. There was much diversity in execution or expression in later structures. Some of them took the form of pyramids in Egypt. In Mycenae we find the "Tomb of Atreus," a magnificent building in the form of a beehive. The large chambers, "Giant Chambers" or _Riesenstuben_ of northern Europe, especially of France, are connected with the older small dolmens by many intermediate forms. For example, if another pair of stones is added to the sides of a fair-sized dolmen, we have a chamber six to eight feet in length. Such dolmens always have a covered entrance to the doorway of at least two pairs of upright stones extending out through the tumulus. Then the number of stones in the sides of the chamber is increased to seven, eight, or nine; and the entrance pa.s.sage is at right angles to the main axis of the chamber, giving a rude T-shaped form to the whole structure.

The number of stones in the roof of the chamber increases with its length. Chambers fifteen to twenty feet long are not uncommon, a length of twenty to thirty feet is rare, a very few attain forty feet. The height was between five and seven feet.

The inner surface of the great stones forming the sides of the chamber is fairly flat. It could have been no easy matter to find in any region a sufficient number of suitable great blocks of the right form. They evidently had some method of splitting large boulders. In some chambers both halves of the same block have been found. These blocks could have been split by heat or by freezing water in a groove or by wooden wedges.

But we do not know the exact method. Near the top the blocks often failed to meet exactly. Large holes were filled with bits of wall of small stones and small c.h.i.n.ks were stuffed with clay and moss.

It is surprising to find that these smaller and larger chambers were erected without any deep foundation for the upright stones. Many of them have fallen from the heaving of the frost. The monuments were generally adequately protected against this by the thick tumulus.

The tumulus was enlarged proportionately and usually completely covered the chamber. Its height averages ten to fifteen feet, and its diameter over ninety. The culvert-like entrance had to be lengthened accordingly.

But one large chamber did not suffice for successive generations. It was often extended or additions were made so that quite complicated forms occur. In England we find frequently a row or cl.u.s.ter of small chambers.

Here the roof is sometimes made of successive layers of stone approaching as they ascended until one slab covered the "false arch." In Brittany we find great diversity as well as complexity of form. In some parts of France the entrance continues the main line of the chamber instead of being at right angles to it. The French have well characterized these as "_Allees couvertes_."

Some of these "gallery chambers" were very large and contained a large number of bodies; sometimes from 40 to 60, in one case 100. The tumulus at Mont St. Michel measures 115 by 58 metres, and forms a veritable hill. Thirty-five thousand cubic metres of stone were employed in the construction of the chamber. Other chambers are from 30 to 50 feet in length. The celebrated chamber at Bagneux, 25 feet long, is composed of fourteen great blocks, of which three form the roof. The great tumulus at _Fontenay-le-Marmion_ in Normandy covered eleven chambers in two parallel rows. All the material for these great structures could hardly have been found in the same vicinity. In one case it appears to have been brought from a quarry two miles away. Some large stones, weighing thousands of tons, seem to have been transported many miles.

Some of the latest structures show a certain amount of degeneration.

Certain galleries were apparently roofed with timber. We find "dry"

masonry, of smaller stones laid in courses but without mortar, alternating with or replacing the great blocks, especially in structures of aeneolithic or Bronze Age. The custom was declining and soon after this disappeared.[90]

The age of these stone monuments can generally be fairly closely determined by the contents, unless these have been removed or destroyed by treasure-hunters, as is often the case. In many cases the objects originally deposited seem to have been few and insignificant. Later, secondary interments were often made in tumuli, but these usually betray their later date by their position above the original chamber or near the side of the mound. We must keep in mind that chambers in the north containing only stone implements may be often of the same age as those farther south containing copper or even bronze, for metal made its way northward only gradually. The custom of building dolmens seems to have persisted later in England than in France. The English round tumuli or barrows belong to the Bronze period. It is not surprising that one country should be more conservative than another, especially if it is somewhat remote.

In Brittany we find the Menhirs or "standing stones," unhewn pillars, regularly accompanying the dolmens. They are by far most abundant in northwestern Europe, but occur elsewhere also. The largest known is the Menhir of Locmariaquer in Morbihan, now fallen and broken. It was almost 21 metres long, and weighed nearly 300,000 kilograms. But specimens are usually much smaller. They seem to characterize the aeneolithic Epoch and the early Bronze Age.

Their meaning is often uncertain. Some of them standing singly were probably erected much later, serving merely to mark boundaries. When a.s.sociated with dolmens they are probably objects of a religious cult a.s.sociated with the burial, rather than mere monuments to the dead. They may well be examples of the world-wide pillar-cult. They remained objects or centres of wors.h.i.+p until late in historic time. The church had a long and hard battle with their cult. Some of them appear to have been thrown down and churches to have been erected over them. On some of them Christian symbols have been carved. Among the people they are still held in reverence or awe. Whatever may have been their origin, they must have had some religious significance or a.s.sociation.

These pillars may be grouped in circles, cromlechs, or in long radiating rows, alignments. Stone circles occur in the Mediterranean region, in Syria, Upper Egypt, and in India. But circles and alignments belong especially to Brittany, Great Britain, and Scandinavia. The most noteworthy are the three adjacent or connected at Carnac, in Morbihan, extending nearly 4,000 metres, and composed of nearly 3,000 Menhirs.

Stonehenge and Avebury in England are almost equally celebrated. They represent the culmination of megalithic development, but are essentially places of wors.h.i.+p and a.s.sembly rather than of burial, though tumuli may be cl.u.s.tered around them like graves in a churchyard.

The changes in the mode of disposal of the dead are evidently the results of changed views concerning the future life. In early Paleolithic times man buried his dead with the best flint axe in his hand, with his ornaments and a supply of food, and often a quant.i.ty of sh.e.l.ls brought from a distance and evidently objects of value. The dead man took with him his weapons and all his wealth. For the living to keep back a portion of what belonged to the departed was robbery, which might be avenged by all sorts of evils and plagues; for all this material wealth and ornament was as much needed and as useful there as here.

Apparently, though this is anything but certain, the dead were buried at first in Europe, extended at full length, and in the caves not far from the abode of the living.