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MEN OF THE OLD STONE AGE
THEIR ENVIRONMENT, LIFE AND ART
BY
HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN
DEDICATED TO
MY DISTINGUISHED GUIDES THROUGH THE UPPER PALAEOLITHIC CAVERNS OF THE
PYRENEES, DORDOGNE, AND THE CANTABRIAN MOUNTAINS OF SPAIN EMILE CARTAILHAC
HENRI BREUIL HUGO OBERMAIER
PREFACE
This volume is the outcome of an ever-memorable tour through the country
of the men of the Old Stone Age, guided by three of the distinguished
archaeologists of France, to whom the work is gratefully dedicated. This
Paleolithic tour of three weeks, accompanied as it was by a constant flow of
conversation and discussion, made a very profound impression, namely, of the
very early evolution of the spirit of man, of the close relation between early
human environment and industry and the development of mind, of the remote
antiquity of the human powers of observation, of discovery, and of invention.
It appears that men with faculties and powers like our own, but in the infancy
of education and tradition, were living in this region of Europe at least
25,000 years ago. Back of these intelligent races were others, also of eastern
origin but in earlier stages of mental development, all pointing to the very
remote ancestry of man from earlier mental and physical stages.
Another great impression from this region is that it is the oldest
centre of human habitation of which we have a complete, unbroken record of
continuous residence from a period as remote as 100,000 years corresponding
with the dawn of human culture, to the hamlets of the modern peasant of France
of A. D. 1915. In contrast, Egyptian, Aegean, and Mesopotamian civilizations appear
as of yesterday.
The history of this region and its people has been developed chiefly
through the genius of French archaeologists, beginning with Boucher de Perthes. The more recent discoveries, which have come in
rapid and almost bewildering succession since the foundation of the Institut de Paléontologie humaine, have
been treated in a number of works recently published by some of the experienced
archaeologists of England, France, and Germany. I refer especially to the Prehistoric Times of Lord Avebury, to the
Ancient Hunters of Professor Sollas, to Der Mensch der Vorzeit of Professor Obermaier, and to Die diluviale Vorzeit Deutschlands of Doctor R. R. Schmidt. Thus, on
receiving the invitation from President Wheeler to lecture upon this subject
before the University of California, I hesitated from the feeling that it would
be difficult to say anything which had not been already as well or better said.
On further reflection, however, I accepted the invitation with the purpose of
attempting to give this great subject a more strictly historical or
chronological treatment than it had previously received within the limits of a
popular work in our own language, also to connect the environment, the animal
and human life, and the art.
This element of the time in which the various events occurred can only
be drawn from a great variety of sources, from the simultaneous consideration
of the geography, climate, plants and animals, the mental and bodily
development of the various races, and the industries and arts which reflect the
relations between the mind and the environment. In more technical terms, I have
undertaken in these lectures to make a synthesis of the results of geology,
paleontology, anthropology, and archaeology, a correlation of environmental and
of human events in the European Ice Age. Such a synthesis was begun many years
ago in the preparation of my Age of
Mammals, but could not be completed until I had gone over the territory
myself.
The attempt to place this long chapter of prehistory on a historical
basis has many dangers, of which I am fully aware. After weighing the evidence
presented by the eminent authorities in these various branches of science, I have
presented my conclusions in very definite and positive form rather than in
vague or general terms, believing that a positive statement has at least the
merit of being positively supported or rebutted by fresh evidence. For example,
I have placed the famous Piltdown man, Eoanthropus, in a comparatively recent stage of geologic
time, an entirely opposite conclusion to that reached by Doctor A. Smith
Woodward, who has taken a leading part in the discovery of this famous race and
has concurred with other British geologists in placing it in early Pleistocene
times. The difference between early and late Pleistocene times is not a matter
of thousands but of hundreds of thousands of years; if so advanced a stage as
the Piltdown man should definitely occur in the early Pleistocene, we may well
expect to discover man in the Pliocene; on the contrary, in my opinion even in
late Pliocene times man had only reached a stage similar to the Pithecanthropus, or prehuman Trinil race of Java; in other words, according to my
view, man as such chiefly evolved during the half million years of the
Pleistocene Epoch and not during the Pliocene.
This question is closely related to that of the antiquity of the oldest
implements shaped by the human hand. Here again I have adopted an opinion
opposed by some of the highest authorities, but supported by others, namely,
that the earliest of these undoubted handiworks occur relatively late in the
Pleistocene, namely, about 125,000 years ago. Since the Piltdown man was found
in association with such implements, it is at once seen that the two questions
hang together.
This work represents the cooperation of many specialists on a single,
very complex problem. I am not in any sense an archaeologist, and in this
important and highly technical field I have relied chiefly upon the work of
Hugo Obermaier and of Déchelette in the Lower Palaeolithic, and of Henri Breuil in the Upper Palaeolithic.
Through the courtesy of Doctor Obermaier I had the
privilege of watching the exploration of the wonderful grotto of Castillo, in
northern Spain, which affords a unique and almost complete sequence of the
industries of the entire Old Stone Age. This visit and that to the cavern of
Altamira, with its wonderful frescoed ceiling, were in themselves a liberal education
in the prehistory of man. With the Abbé Breuil I
visited all the old camping stations of Upper Palaeolithic times in Dordogne and noted with wonder and admiration his detection of all the
fine gradations of invention which separate the flint-makers of that period.
With Professor Cartailhac I enjoyed a broad survey of
the Lower and Upper Palaeolithic stations and caverns
of the Pyrenees region and took note of his learned and spirited comments. Here
also we had the privilege of being with the party who entered for the first
time the cavern of Tuc d’Audoubert,
with the Comte de Begouen and his sons.
In the American Museum I have been greatly aided by Mr. Nels C. Nelson, who has reviewed all the archaeological
notes and greatly assisted me in the classification of the flint and bone
implements which is adopted in this volume.
In the study of the divisions, duration, and fluctuations of climate
during the Old Stone Age I have been assisted chiefly by Doctor Chester A.
Reeds, a geologist of the American Museum, who devoted two months to bringing
together in a comprehensive and intelligible form the results of the great
researches of Albrecht Penck and Eduard Bruckner
embraced in the three-volume work, Die Alpen im Eiszeitalter.
The temperatures and snow-levels of the Glacial Epoch, which is contemporaneous
with the Old Stone Age, together with the successive phases of mammalian life
which they conditioned, afford the firm basis of our chronology; that is, we
must reckon the grand divisions of past time in terms of Glacial and
Interglacial Stages; the subdivisions are recorded in terms of the human
invention and progress of the flint industry. I have also had frequent recourse
to The Great Ice Age and the more
recent Antiquity of Man in Europe of
James Geikie, the founder of the modern theory of the multiple Ice Age in
Europe.
It is a unique pleasure to express my indebtedness to the Upper Palaeolithic artists of the now extinct Cro-Magnon race,
from whose work I have sought to portray so far as possible the mammalian and
human life of the Old Stone Age. While we owe the discovery and early
interpretation of this art to a generation of archaeologists, it has remained
for the Abbé Breuil not only to reproduce the art
with remarkable fidelity but to firmly establish a chronology of the stages of
art development. These results are brilliantly set forth in a superb series of
volumes published by the Institut de Paléontologie humaine on the foundation of the Prince of Monaco; in
fact, the memoirs on the art and industry of Grimaldi, Font-de-Gaume, Altamira, La Pasiega, and the Cantabrian caves of Spain (Les Cavernes de la Région Cantabrique),
representing the combined labors of Capitan, Cartailhac, Verneau, Boule, Obermaier,
and Breuil, mark a new epoch in the prehistory of man
in Europe. There never has been a more fortunate union of genius, opportunity,
and princely support.
In the collection of materials and illustrations from the vast number of
original papers and memoirs consulted in the preparation of this volume, as
well as in the verification of the text and proofs, I have been constantly
aided by one of my research assistants, Miss Christina D. Matthew, who has
greatly facilitated the work. I am indebted also to Miss Mabel R. Percy for the
preparation and final revision of the manuscript. From the bibliography
prepared by Miss Jannette M. Lucas, the reader may
find the original authority for every statement which does not rest on my own
observation or reflection.
Interest in human evolution centres chiefly in
the skull and in the brain. The slope of the forehead and the other angles,
which are so important in forming an estimate of the brain capacity, may be
directly compared throughout this volume, because the profile or side view of
every skull figured is placed in exactly the same relative position, namely, on
the lines established by the anatomists of the Frankfort Convention to conform
to the natural pose of the head on the living body.
In anatomy I have especially profited by the cooperation of my former
student and present university colleague Professor J. Howard McGregor, of Columbia,
who has shown great anatomical as well as artistic skill in the restoration of
the heads of the four races of Trinil, Piltdown,
Neanderthal, and Cro-Magnon. The
new reconstruction of the Piltdown head is with the aid of casts sent to me by
my friend Doctor A. Smith Woodward, of the British Museum of Natural History.
The problem of reconstruction of the Piltdown skull has, through the
differences of interpretation by Smith Woodward, Elliot Smith, and Arthur
Keith, become one of the causes célèbres of anthropology.On the placing of the fragments of the skull and
jaws, which have few points of contact, depends the all-important question of
the size of the brain and the character of the profile of the face and jaws. In
Professor McGregor’s reconstruction different methods have been used from those
employed by the British anatomists, and advantage has been taken of an
observation of Mr. A. E. Anderson that the single canine tooth belongs in the
upper and not in the lower jaw. In these models, and in all the restorations of
men by Charles R. Knight under my direction, the controlling principle has been
to make the restoration as human as the anatomical evidence will admit. This
principle is based upon the theory for which I believe very strong grounds may
be adduced, that all these races represent stages of advancing and progressive
development; it has seemed to me, therefore, that in our restorations we should
indicate as much alertness, intelligence, and upward tendency as possible. Such
progressive expression may, in fact, be observed in the faces of the higher
anthropoid apes, such as the chimpanzees and orangs, when in process of
education. No doubt, our ancestors of the early Stone Age were brutal in many
respects, but the representations which have been made chiefly by French and
German artists of men with strong gorilla or chimpanzee characteristics are, I
believe, unwarranted by the anatomical remains and are contrary to the conception
which we must form of beings in the scale of rapidly ascending intelligence.
Henry Fairfield Osborn.
American Museum of Natural History June 21, 1915.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
Conclusions
“Things throughout
proceed
In firm, undevious order, and maintain,
To nature true, their fixt generic stamp.
Yet man’s first
sons, as o’er the fields they trod,
Reared from the hardy earth, were hardier far;
Strong built with ampler bones, with muscles nerved
Broad and substantial; to the power of heat,
Of cold, of varying viands, and disease,
Each hour superior; the wild lives of beasts
Leading, while many a lustre o’er them rolled.
Nor crooked plough-share knew they, nor to drive,
Deep through the soil, the rich-returning spade;
Nor how the tender seedling to replant,
Nor from the fruit-tree prune the withered branch.
“Nor knew they yet the crackling blaze t’excite,
Or clothe their limbs with furs, or savage hides.
But groves concealed them, woods, and hollow hills;
And, when rude rains, or bitter blasts o’erpowered,
Low bushy shrubs their squalid members wrapped.
“And in their keen rapidity of hand
And foot confiding, oft the savage train
With missile stones they hunted, or the force
Of clubs enormous; many a tribe they felled,
Yet some in caves shunned, cautious; where, at night,
Thronged they, like bristly swine; their naked limbs
With herbs and leaves entwining. Nought of
fear
Urged them to quit the darkness, and recall,.
With clamorous cries, the sunshine and the day:
But sound they sunk in deep, oblivious sleep,
Till o’er the mountains blushed the roseate dawn.
“This ne’er distressed them, but the fear alone
Some ruthless monster might their dreams molest,
The foamy boar, or lion, from their caves
Drive them aghast beneath the midnight shade,
And seize their leaf-wrought couches for themselves.
“Yet then scarce more of mortal race than now
Left the sweet lustre of the liquid day.
Some doubtless, oft the prowling monsters gaunt
Grasped in their jaws, abrupt; whence, through the groves,
The woods, the mountains, they vociferous groaned,
Destined thus living to a living tomb.
“Yet when, at length, rude huts they first devised,
And fires, and garments; and, in union sweet,
Man wedded woman, the pure joys indulged
Of chaste connubial love, and children rose,
The rough barbarians softened. The warm hearth
Their frames so melted they no more could bear,
As erst, th’
uncovered skies; the nuptial bed
Broke their wild vigor, and the fond caress
Of prattling children from the bosom chased
Their stern ferocious manners.”
This is a picture of many phases in the life of primitive man: his
powerful frame, his ignorance of agriculture, his dependence on the fruits and
animal products of the earth, his discovery of fire and of clothing, his chase
of wild beasts with clubs and missile stones, his repair to caverns, his
contests with the lion and the boar, his invention of rude huts and dwellings,
the softening of his nature through the sweet influence of family life and of
children, all these are veritable stages in our prehistoric development. The
influence of Greek thought is also reflected in the Satires of Horace, and the
Greek conception of the natural history of man, voiced by Aeschylus as early as
the fifth century B. C., prevailed widely before the Christian era, when it
gradually gave way to the Mosaic conception of special creation, which spread
all over western Europe.
Rise or Modern Anthropology
As the idea of the natural history of man again arose, during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it came not so much from previous sources
as from the dawning science of comparative anatomy. From the year 1597, when a
Portuguese sailor’s account of an animal resembling the chimpanzee was embodied
in Filippo Pigafetta’s Description of the Kingdom of the Congo,
the many points of likeness between the anthropoid apes and man were treated
both in satire and caricature and in serious anatomical comparison as evidence
of kinship.
The first French evolutionist, Buffon, observed in 1749: “The first
truth that makes itself apparent on serious study of nature is one that man may
perhaps find humiliating; it is this—that he, too, must take his place in the
ranks of animals, being, as he is, an animal in every material point.” Buffon’s
convictions were held in check by clerical and official influences, yet from
his study of the orang in 1766 we can entertain no doubt of his belief that men
and apes are descended from common ancestors.
The second French evolutionist, Lamarck, in 1809 boldly proclaimed the
descent of man from the anthropoid apes, pointing out their close anatomical
resemblances combined with inferiority both in bodily and mental capacity. In
the evolution of man Lamarck perceived the great importance of the erect
position, which is only occasionally assumed by the apes; also that children
pass gradually from the quadrumanous to the upright
position, and thus repeat the history of their ancestors Man’s origin is traced
as follows: A race of quadrumanous apes gradually
acquires the upright position in walking, with a corresponding modification of
the limbs, and of the relation of the head and face to the back-bone. Such a
race, having mastered all the other animals, spreads out over the world. It
checks the increase of the races nearest itself and, spreading in all
directions, begins to lead a social life, develops the power of speech and the
communication of ideas. It develops also new requirements, one after another,
which lead to industrial pursuits and to the gradual perfection of its powers.
Eventually this preeminent race, having acquired absolute supremacy, comes to
be widely different from even the most perfect of the lower animals.
The period following the latest publication of Lamarck’s remarkable
speculations in the year 1822, was distinguished by the earliest discoveries of
the industry of the caveman in southern France in 1828, and in Belgium, near
Liege, in 1833; discoveries which afforded the first scientific proof of the geologic
antiquity of man and laid the foundations of the science of archaeology.
The earliest recognition of an entirely extinct race of men was that
which was called the ‘Neanderthal,’ found, in 1856, near Dusseldorf, and
immediately recognized by Schaaffhausen as a
primitive race of low cerebral development and of uncommon bodily strength.
Darwin in the Origin of Species,
which appeared in 1858, did not discuss the question of human descent, but
indicated the belief that light would be thrown by his theory on the origin of
man and his history.
It appears that Lamarck’s doctrine in the Philosophic Zoologique (1809) made a
profound impression on the mind of Lyell, who was the first to treat the
descent of man in a broad way from the standpoint of comparative anatomy and of
geologic age. In his great work of 1863, The
Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man, Lyell cited Huxley’s estimate
of the Neanderthal skull as more primitive than that of the Australian but of
surprisingly large cranial capacity. He concludes with the notable statement:
“The direct bearing of the ape-like character of the Neanderthal skull on
Lamarck’s doctrine of progressive development and transmutation . . . consists
in this, that the newly observed deviation from a normal standard of human
structure is not in a casual or random direction, but just what might have been
anticipated if the laws of variation were such as the transmutationists require. For if we conceive the cranium to be very ancient, it exemplifies a
less advanced stage of progressive development and improvement.”
Lyell followed this by an exhaustive review of all the then existing
evidence in favor of the great geological age of man, considering the
‘river-drift,’ the ‘loess,’ and the loam deposits, and the relations of man to
the divisions of the Glacial Epoch. Referring to what is now known as the Lower Palaeolithic of St. Acheul and the Upper Palaeolithic of Aurignac, he says that
they were doubtless separated by a vast interval of time, when we consider that
the flint implements of St. Acheul belong either to
the Post-Pliocene or early Pleistocene time, or the ‘older drift.’
It is singular that in the Descent
of Man, published in 1871, eight years after the appearance of Lyell’s
great work, Charles Darwin made only passing mention of the Neanderthal race,
as follows: “Nevertheless, it must be admitted that some skulls of very high
antiquity, such as the famous one at Neanderthal, are well-developed and
capacious.” It was the relatively large brain capacity which turned Darwin’s attention
away from a type which has furnished most powerful support to his theory of
human descent. In the two hundred pages which Darwin devotes to the descent of
man, he treats especially the evidences, presented in comparative anatomy and comparative
psychology as well as the evidence afforded by the comparison of the lower and
higher races of man. As regards the “birthplace and antiquity of man,” he
observes:
“. . . In each
great region of the world the living mammals are closely related to the extinct
species of the same region. It is therefore probable that Africa was formerly
inhabited by extinct apes closely allied to the gorilla and chimpanzee; and as
these two species are now man’s nearest allies, it is somewhat more probable
that our early progenitors lived on the African continent than elsewhere. But
it is useless to speculate on this subject; for two or three anthropomorphous
apes, one the Dryopithecus of Lartet, nearly as large as a man, and closely allied to Hylobates, existed in Europe
during the Miocene Age; and since so remote a period the earth has certainly
undergone many great revolutions, and there has been ample time for migration
on the largest scale.
“At the period and place, whenever and wherever it was, when man first lost
his hairy covering, he probably inhabited a hot country; a circumstance
favorable for the frugivorous diet on which, judging
from analogy, he subsisted. We are far from knowing how long ago it was when
man first diverged from the catarrhine stock; but it
may have occurred at an epoch as remote as the Eocene Period; for that the
higher apes had diverged from the lower apes as early as the Upper Miocene
Period is shown by the existence of the Dryopithecus.”
With this speculation of Darwin the reader should compare the state of
our knowledge today regarding the descent of man, as presented in the first and
last chapters of this volume.
The most telling argument against the Lamarck-Lyell-Darwin theory was the absence of those missing links which theoretically sohuld be connecting man with the anthropoid apes, for at that, time the Neanderthal race was not recognized as such. Between 1848 and 1914 successive discoveries have been made of a series of human fossils belonging to intermediate races: some of these are now recognized as missing links between the existing human species, Homo sapiens, and the anthropoid apes; and others as the earliest known forms of Homo sapiens:
Breadth of skull X 100 - length of skull.
In this sense the primitive men of the Old Stone Age were mostly
‘dolichocephalic,’ that is, the breadth of the skull was in general less than
75 per cent of the length, as in the existing Australians, Kaffirs, Zulus,
Eskimos, and Fijians. But some of the Palaeolithic races were ‘mesaticephalic’; that is, the breadth was
between 75 per cent and 80 per cent of the length, as in the existing Chinese
and Polynesians. The third or ‘brachycephalic’ type is the exception among Palaeolithic skulls, in which the breadth is over 80 per
cent of the length, as in the Malays, Burmese, American Indians, and Andamanese.
The cephalic index, however, tells us little of the position of the
skull as a brain-case in the ascending or descending scale, and following the
elaborate systems of skull measurements which were built up by Retzius and
Broca, and based chiefly on the outside characters of the skull, came the
modern system of Schwalbe, which has been devised
especially to measure the skull with reference to the all-important criterion
of the size of the different portions of the brain, and of approximately
estimating the cubic capacity of the brain from the more or less complete measurements
of the skull.
Among these measurements are the slope of the forehead, the height of
the median portion of the skullcap, and the ratio between the upper portion of
the cranial chamber and the lower portion. In brief, the seven principal
measures which Schwalbe now employs are chiefly
expressions of diameters which correspond with the number of cubic centimetres occupied by the brain as a whole.
In this manner Schwalbe confirms Boule’s estimates of the variations
in the cubic capacity of the brain in different members of the Neanderthal race
as follows:
Neanderthal race—La Chapelle…
1620 c.cm.
“ “ —Neanderthal….1408 “ .
“ “ —LaQuina...........1367 “ .
“ “
—Gibraltar...........1 290 “ .
Thus the variations between the largest known brain in one member of the
Neanderthal race, the male skull of La Chapelle, and
the smallest brain of the same race, the supposed female skull of Gibraltar, is
324 c.cm., a range similar to that which find in the existing species of man (Homo sapiens).
As another test for the classification of primitive skulls, we may
select the well-known frontal angle of Broca, as
modified by Schwalbe, for measuring the retreating
forehead. The angle is measured by drawing a line along the forehead upward
from the bony ridge between the eyebrows, with a horizontal line carried from
the glabella to the inion at the back of the skull. The various primitive races
are arranged as follows:
PER
CENT
Homo sapiens, with an average forehead...................frontal angle
90
Homo sapiens, with extreme retreating forehead........ “ “ 72.3
Homo neanderthalensis, with the least
retreating forehead. “ “ 70
Homo neanderthalensis, with the most
retreating forehead. “ “ 57.5
Pithecanthropus erectus (Trinil race)............................................ 52.5
Highest anthropoid apes..............................................................
“ 56
For instance, this illustrates the fact that in the Trinil race the forehead is actually lower than in some of the highest anthropoid
apes; that in the Neanderthal race the forehead is more retreating than in any
of the existing human races of Homo sapiens.
Archaeology of the Old Stone Age
The proofs of the prehistory of man arose afresh, and from an entirely
new source, in the beginning of the eighteenth century through discoveries in Germany,
by which the Greek anticipations of a stone age were verified. For a century
and a half the great animal life of the diluvial world had aroused the wonder and speculation of the early naturalists. In 1750
Eccardus17 of Braunschweig advanced the first steps
toward prehistoric chronology, in expressing the opinion that the human race
first lived in a period in which stone served as the only weapon and tool, and
that this was followed by a bronze and then by an iron period of human culture.
As early as 1700 a human skull was discovered at Cannstatt and was believed to be of a period as ancient as the mammoth and the cave-bear.
France, favored beyond all other countries by the men of the Old Stone
Age, was destined to become the classic centre of prehistoric archaeology. As
early as 1740 Mahudel published a treatise upon stone
implements and laid the foundations both of Neolithic and Palaeolithic research. By the beginning of the nineteenth century the problem, of fossil man
had awakened wide-spread interest and research. In Buckland’s19 Reliquiae diluviance, published
in 1824, the great mammals of the Old Stone Age are treated as relics of the
flood. In 1825 Mac-Enery explored the cavern of
Kent’s Hole, near Torquay, finding human bones and
flint flakes associated with the remains of the cave-bear and cave-hyena, but
the notes of this discovery were not published until 1840, when Godwin-Austen
gave the first description of Kent’s Hole. In 1828 Tournal and Christol announced the first discoveries in
France (Languedoc) of the association of human bones with the remains of
extinct animals. In 1833-4 Schmerling described his explorations in the caverns
near Liége, in Belgium, in which he found human bones
and rude flint implements intermingled with the remains of the mammoth, the
woolly rhinoceros, the cave-hyaena, and the
cave-bear. This is the first published evidence of the life of the Cave Period
of Europe, and was soon followed by the recognition of similar cavern deposits
along the south coast of Great Britain, in France, Belgium and Italy.
The work of the caveman, gradually revealed between 1828 and 1840, is
now known to belong to the closing period of the Old Stone Age, and it is very
remarkable that the next discovery related to the very dawn of the Old Stone
Age, namely, to the life of the 'river-drift’ man of the Lower Palaeolithic.
This discovery of what is now known as Chellean and Acheulean industry came through the explorations
of Boucher de Perthes, between 1839 and 1846, in the
valley of the River Somme, which flows through Amiens and Abbeville and empties
into the English Channel half-way between Dieppe and Boulogne. In 1841 this
founder of modern archaeology unearthed near Abbeville a single flint, rudely
fashioned into a cutting instrument, buried in river sand and associated with
mammalian remains. This was followed by the collection of many other ancient
weapons and implements, and in the year 1846 Boucher de Perthes published his first work, entitled De L’Industrie primitive, ou des
Arts à leur Origine, in
which he announced that he had found human implements in beds unmistakably
belonging to the age of the ‘river-drift.’ This work and the succeeding (1857), Antiquités celtiques et antédiluviennes, were received with great scepticism until confirmed in 1853 by Rigollot’s discovery of the now famous ‘river-drift’ beds of St. Acheul,
near Amiens. In the succeeding years the epoch-making work of Boucher de Perthes was welcomed and confirmed by leading British
geologists and archaeologists, Falconer, Prestwich, Evans, and others who
visited the Somme. Lubbock’s article of 1862, on the Evidence of the Antiquity of Man A forded by the Physical Structure of
the Somme Valley, pointing out the great geologic age of the river sands
and gravels and of the mammals which they contained, was followed by the
discovery of similar flints in the ‘ river-drifts ’ of Suffolk and Kent,
England, in the valley of the Thames near Dartford.
Thus came the first positive proofs that certain types of stone implements were
widespread geographically, and thus was afforded the means of comparing the age
of one deposit with another.
This led Sir John Lubbock to divide the prehistoric period into four
great epochs, in descending order as follows:
The Iron Age, in which iron
had superseded bronze for arms, axes, knives, etc., while bronze remained in
common use for ornaments.
The Bronze Age, in which
bronze was used for arms and cutting instruments of all kinds.
The later or polished Stone Age, termed by Lubbock the Neolithic Period, characterized by
weapons and instruments made of flint and other kinds of stone, with no
knowledge of any metal excepting gold.
Age of the Drift, termed by Lubbock the Paleolithic Period, characterized by chipped or flaked implements
of flint and other kinds of stone, and by the presence of the mammoth, the
cave-bear, the woolly rhinoceros, and other extinct animals.
Edouard Lartet, in 1860, began exploring the caverns of the Pyrenees and of Périgord,
first examining the remarkable cavern of Aurignac with its burial vault, its
hearths, its reindeer and mammoth fauna, its spear points of bone and
engravings on bone mingled with a new and distinctive flint culture. This
discovery, published in 1861, led to the full revelation of the hitherto
unknown Reindeer and Art Period of the Old Stone Age, now known as the Upper Palaeolithic. As a palaeontologist,
it was natural for Lartet to propose a fourfold classification of the ‘Reindeer
Period,’ based upon the supposed succession of the dominant forms of mammalian
life, namely:
(d) Age of the Aurochs or Bison.
(c) Age of the Woolly Mammoth and Rhinoceros.
(b) Age of the Reindeer.
(a) Age of the Cave-Bear.
Lartet, in association with the British archaeologist, Christy, explored
the now famous rock shelters and caverns of Dordogne—Laugerie,
La Madeleine, Les Eyzies, and Le Moustier—which
one by one yielded a variety of flint and bone implements, engravings and
sculpture on bone and ivory, and a rich extinct fauna, in which the reindeer
and mammoth predominated. The results of this decade of exploration are
recorded in their classic work, Reliquice Aquitanicae. Lartet, observes Breuil,
clearly perceived the level of Aurignac, where the fauna of the great cave-bear
and of the mammoth appears to yield to that of the reindeer. Above he perceived
the stone culture of the Solutrean type in Laugerie Haute, and of the Magdalenian type in Laugerie Basse. Lartet also
distinguished between the archaeological period of St. Acheul (= Lower Palaeolithic) and that of Aurignac (= Upper Palaeolithic).
It remained, however, for Gabriel de Mortillet,
the first French archaeologist to survey and systematize the development of the
flint industry throughout the entire Palaeolithic Period, to recognize that the Magdalenian followed the Solutrean,
and that during the latter stage industry in stone reached its height, while
during the Magdalenian the industry in bone and in wood developed in a
marvelous manner. Mortillet failed to recognize the
position of the Aurignacian and omitted it from his
archaeological chronology, which was first published in 1869, Essai de classification des cavernes et des stations sous abri, fondée sur les produits de I’industrie humaine.
(5) Magdalenien,
characterized by a number and variety of bone implements;
(4) Solutréen,
leaf-like lance-heads beautifully worked;
(3) Moustérien,
flints worked mostly on one side only; .
(2) Acheuléen,
the ‘langues de chat’ hand-axes of St. Acheul;
(1) Chelléen,
bold, primitive, partly worked hand-axes.
Shortly after the Franco-Prussian War, Edouard Piette (1827-1906), who had held the office of
magistrate in various towns in the departments of Ardennes and Aisne, France,
and who was already distinguished for his general scientific attainments, began
to devote himself especially to the evolution of art in Upper Palaeolithic times, and assembled the great collections
which are described and illustrated in his classic work, L’Art pendant l’Age du Renne (1907). He first established several phases of artistic evolution in the
Magdalenian stage, and only recognized in his later years the station of Brassempouy, not comprehending that the Aurignacian art which he found there underlay the Solutrean culture and was separated by a long interval of time from the most ancient
Magdalenian. His distinct contribution to Palaeolithic history is his discovery of the Étage azilien overlying the Magdalenian in the cavern of Mas d’Azil.
Henri Breuil, a pupil of Piette and of Cartailhac, exploring during the decade,
1902-12, chiefly under the influence of Cartailhac,
formed a clear conception of the whole Upper Palaeolithic and its subdivisions, and placed the Aurignacian definitely at the base of the series.
Thus step by step the culture stages of archaeological evolution have
been established and may be summarized with the type stations as follows :
ÉTAGE STATION
Tardenoisien, Fére-en-Tardenois,
Aisne.
Azilien, Mas d’Azil, Ariege.
Magdalenien, La Madeleine, près Tursac, Dordogne
Solutreen, Solutre pres Micon, Saône-et-Loire.
Aurignacien, Le
Moustier, commune de Peyzac,
Mousterien, Dordogne. St. Acheul, près Amiens, Somme.
Acheuleen, Aurignac,
Haute-Garonne.
Chelleen, Chelles-sur-Marne,
Seine-et-Mame.
Pre-Chelleen
(= Mesvinien, Rutot), Mesvin, Mons, Belgique.
These stages, at first regarded as single, have each been subdivided
into three or more substages, as a result of the more
refined appreciation of the subtle advances in Palaeolithic invention and technique.
A new impulse to the study of Palaeolithic culture was given in 1895, when E. Rivière discovered examples of Palaeolithic mural art in the cavern of La Mouthe, thus
confirming the original discovery, in 1880, by Marcelino de Sautuola of the wonderful ceiling frescoes of the
cave of Altamira, northern Spain. This created the opportunity for the
establishment by the Prince of Monaco of the Institut de Paléontologie humaine in 1910, supporting the combined researches of the Upper Palaeolithic culture and art of France and Spain, by Cartailhac, Capitan, Rivière, Boule, Breuil,
and Obermaier, and marking a new epoch in the
brilliant history of the archaeology of France.
It remained for the prehistory of the borders of the Danube, Rhine, and
Neckar to be brought into harmony with that of France, and this has been
accomplished with extraordinary precision and fullness through the labors of R.
R. Schmidt, begun in 1906, and brought together in his invaluable work, Die diluviale Vorzeit Deutschlands.
To an earlier and longer epoch belongs the Prepalaeolithic or Eolithic stage. Beginning in 1867 with the supposed discovery by l’Abbé Bourgeois of a primordial or Prepalaeolithic stone culture, much observation and speculation has been devoted to the
Eolithic era and the Eolithic industry, culminating in the complete
chronological system of Rutot, as follows:
LOWES QUATERNARY,
OR PLEISTOCENE
Strepyian (= Pre-Chellean, in part).
Mesvinian, culture of Mesvin, near Mons, Belgium (=
Pre-Chellean).
Mafflean, culture of Maffle, near Ath, Hennegau.
Reutelian, culture of Reutel, Ypres, West Flanders.
TERTIARY
Prestian, culture of St. Prest, Eure-et-Loire,
Upper Pliocene.
Kentian, culture of the plateau of Kent, Middle Pliocene.
Cantalian, culture of Aurillac, Cantal,
Upper Miocene or Lower Pliocene.
Fagnian, culture of Boncelles, Ardennes, Middle
Oligocene.
Only the Mesvinian stage is generally accepted
by archaeologists, and this embraces the prototypes of the Lower Palaeolithic culture, which among most French authors are
termed Pre-Chellean or Proto-Chellean.
The Eolithic problem has aroused the most animated controversy, in which
opinion is divided. A critical consideration of this era, however, falls
without the province of the present work.
SUCCESSION OF HUMAN INDUSTRIES AND CULTURES
V. LATER. IRON AGE.....................Europe 500 B.
C. to Roman Times.
(La Tène Culture)
IV. EARLIER IRON AGE..................Europe 1000-500
B. C.
(Hallstatt Culture).................Orient 1800-1000
III. BRONZE AGE.............................Europe about 2000-1000
Orient “ 4000—1800
3. LATE NEOLITHIC and COPPER
AGE (Transition Period).........Europe 3000-2000.
2. TYPICAL NEOLITHIC AGE (Roben-
hausian,
Swiss Lake-Dwellers)….Europe 7000.
1. EARLY NEOLITHIC STAGES
(Campignian Culture)............Europe
I. OLD STONE AGE, PALEOLITHIC
UPPER
PALMOLITHIC..............Europe
8. Azilian-Tardenoisian. 12.000.
7. Magdalenian. (Close of Postglacial time.) 16.000.
6. Solutrean.
S. Aurignacian. (Beginning of Postglacial
time.)
LOWER PALAEOLITHIC
4. Mousterian. (Fourth Glacial time.) 40.000
3. Acheulean. (Transition to shelters.)
2. Chellean. 100.000
1. Pre-Chellean (Mesvinian.)
EOLITHIC.
Geologic History of Man
Man emerges from the vast geologic history of the earth in the period
known as the Pleistocene, or Glacial, and Postglacial, the ‘Diluvium’ of the
older geologists. The men of the Old Stone Age in western Europe are now known
through the latter half of Glacial times
to the very end of Postglacial times, when the Old Stone Age, with its
wonderful environment of mammalian and human life, comes to a gradual close,
and the New Stone Age begins with the climate and natural beauties of the
forests, meadows, and Alps of Europe as they were before the destroying hand of
economic civilization fell upon them.
It is our difficult but fascinating task to project in our imagination
the extraordinary series of prehistoric natural events which .were witnessed by
the successive races of Palaeolithic men in Europe;
such a combination and sequence never occurred before in the world’s history
and will never occur again. They centred around three
distinct and yet closely related groups of causes. First, the formation of the
two great ice-fields centring over the Scandinavian
peninsula and over the Alps; second, the arrival or assemblage in western
Europe of mammals from five entirely different life-zones or natural habitats;
third, the arrival in Europe of seven or eight successive races of men by
migration, chiefly from the great Eurasiatic continent of the East.
Throughout this long epoch western Europe is to be viewed as a
peninsula, surrounded on all sides by the sea and stretching westward from the
great land mass of eastern Europe and of Asia, which was the chief theatre of
evolution both of animal and human life. It was the ‘far west’ of all
migrations of animals and men. Nor may we disregard the vast African land mass,
the northern coasts of which afforded a great southern migration route from
Asia, and may have supplied Europe with certain of its human races such as the
‘Grimaldi.’
These three principal phenomena of the ice-fields, the mammals, and the
human life and industry, together establish the chronology of the Age of Man.
In other words, there are four ways of keeping prehistoric time: that of geology, that of palaeontology,
that of anatomy, and that of human industry. Geologic events mark the grand divisions
of time; palaeontologic and anatomic events mark the
lesser divisions; while the successive phases of human industry mark the least
divisions. The geologic chronology deals with such immense periods of time that
its ratio to the animal and to the human chronology is like that of years to
hours and to minutes of our own solar time.
The Glacial Epoch when first revealed by Charpentier and Agassiz, between 1837 and 1840, was supposed to correspond to a single
great advance and retreat of the ice-fields from various centres.
The vague problem of the antiquity of Pliocene man and Diluvial man soon merged into the far more definite chronology of glacial and interglacial man.
As early as 1854, Morlot discovered near Dürnten, on the borders of the lake of Zurich, a bed of
fossil plants indicating a period of south temperate climate intervening
between two great deposits of glacial origin. This led to the new conception of
cold glacial stages and warm interglacial stages, and Morlot himself advanced the theory that there had been three glacial stages separated
by two interglacial stages. Other discoveries followed both of fossil plants
and mammals adapted to warmer periods intervening between the colder periods.
Moreover, successive glacial moraines and ‘drifts,’ and successive river
‘terraces’ were found to confirm the theory of multiple glacial stages. The
British geologist, James Geikie (1871-94) marshalled all the evidence for the extreme hypothesis of a succession of six glacial and
five interglacial stages, each with its corresponding cold and warm climates. Strong
confirmation of a theory of four great glaciations came through the American
geologists, Chamberlin, Salisbury, and others, in the discovery of evidence of
four chief glacial and three interglacial stages in northern portions of our
own continent. Finally, a firm foundation of the quadruple glacial theory in
Europe was laid by the classic researches of Penck and Bruckner in the Alps, which were published in 1909. Thus the exhaustive
research of Geikie, of Chamberlin and Salisbury, of Penck and Bruckner, and finally of Leverett has firmly
established eight subdivisions or stages of Pleistocene time, namely, four
glacial, three interglacial, and one postglacial. These not only mark the great
eras of European time but also make possible the synchrony of America with Europe.
Since most of the skeletal and cultural remains of man can now be
definitely attributed to certain glacial, interglacial, or postglacial stages,
vast interest attaches to the very difficult problem of the duration of the
whole Ice Age and the relative duration of its various glacial and interglacial
stages. The following figures set forth the wide variations in opinion on this
subject and the two opposite tendencies of speculation which lead to greatly
expanded or greatly abbreviated estimates of Pleistocene time:
DURATION OF THE ICE AGE
1863. Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology.............800,000 years.
1874. James D. Dana, Manual of Geology...............720,000 “
1893. Charles D. Walcott, Geologic Time as Indicated by
the Sedimentary Rocks of
North America.........400,000 “
1893. W. Upham, Estimates of Geologic Times,
Amer.
Jour. Sci., vol. XLV.......................100,000 “
1894. A. Heim, Ueber das absolute Alter der Eiszeit.....100,000
“
1900. W. J. Sollas, Evolutional Geology....................400.000
“
1909. Albrecht Penck. Die Alpen im Eiszeitalter........520,000-840,000
1914. James Geikie, The
Antiquity of Man in Europe.. .620,000 (min.)
We may adopt for the present work the more conservative estimate of Penck that since the first great ice-age in Scandinavia, in the Alps, and in North America west of Hudson Bay a period of
time of not less than 520,000 years has elapsed. The relative duration of the
subdivisions of the Glacial Epoch is also studied by Penck in his Chronologie des Eiszeitalters in den Alpen. These stages are not in any degree
rhythmic, or of equal length either in western Europe or in North America.
The unit of glacial measurement chosen by Penck is the time which has elapsed since the close of the fourth and last great glaciation;
this is known as the Würm in the Alpine region and as the Wisconsin in America. While more limited than
the ice-caps of the second glaciation, those of the fourth glaciation were
still of vast extent in Europe and in this country, so that an estimate of
20,000 to 34,000 years for the unit of the entire Postglacial stage is not
extreme. Estimating this unit at 25,000 years and accepting Reeds’s estimate of the relative length of time occupied by each of the preceding
glacial and interglacial stages, we reach the following results :
The Postglacial time divisions are dated by three successive advances of
the ice-caps, which broadly correspond with Geikie’s fifth and sixth
glaciations; they are known in the Alpine region as the Bühl, Gschnitz, and Daun. These three waves of cold and humid
climate, each accompanied by glacial advances, finally terminated with the retreat
of the snow and ice in the Alpine region, the same conditions prevailing as
with the present climate. The minimum time estimates of these Postglacial
stages and the corresponding periods of human culture, as calculated by Heim, Nüesch, Penck, and many others,
are summarized in the Upper Palaeolithic.
Geologic and Human Chronology
There are four ways in which the lesser divisions and sequence of human
chronology may be dated through geologic or earth-forming events. First,
through the age of the culture stations or human remains, as indicated by the
‘river-drifts’ and ‘river terraces’ in or upon which they occur; second,
through the age of the open ‘loess’ stations which are found both on the ‘older
terraces’ and on the plateaus between the river valleys; third, through the age
of the shelters and caverns in which skeletal and cultural remains occur;
fourth, through the age of the ‘loam’ deposits, which have drifted down on the
‘terraces’ from the surrounding meadows and hills. The men of the Old Stone Age
were attracted to these natural camps and dwelling-places both by the abundance
of the raw flint materials from which the palaeoliths were fashioned and by the presence of game.
In more than ninety years of exploration only three skeletal relics of
man have been found in the ancient ‘river-drifts’; these are the ‘Trinil,’ the ‘Heidelberg,’ and the ‘Piltdown’; in each
instance the human remains were buried accidentally with those of extinct
animals, after drifting for some distance in the river or stream beds. It is
only in late Acheulean times that human burial rites
or interments begin and that skeletal remains are found. Owing to the less
perishable nature of flint, relics of the quarries and stations are infinitely
more common; they are found both in the river sands and gravels, in the ‘river
terraces,’ and in the ‘loess’ stations of the plateaus and uplands. Thus
prehistoric chronology is based on observations of the geologist, who in turn
is greatly aided by the archaeologist, because the evolution stages of each
type of implement are practically the same all over western Europe, with the
exception of unimportant local inventions and variations. In brief, the large
divisions of time are determined by the amount of work done by geologic
agencies; the comparative age of the various camp sites is determined by their
geologic succession, by the mammals and plants which occur in them, and finally
by the cultural type of any industrial remains that may be found.
Times of the ‘High’ and ‘Low’ River ‘Terraces’
The so-called ‘terrace’ chronology is to be used by the prehistorian with caution, for it is obvious that the
‘terraces’ in the different river-valleys of western Europe were not all formed
at the same time; thus the testimony of the ‘ terraces ’ is always to be
checked off by other evidence.
As to the origin of the sands and gravels which compose the ‘terraces’ we know that the glacial stages were periods of the wearing away of vast materials from the summits and sides of the mountains, which were transported by the rivers to the valleys and plains. These vast deposits of glacial times spread out over the very broad surfaces of the pristine river-bottoms, which in many valleys it is important to note were from 100 to 150 feet above the present levels. The diminished and contracted streams of interglacial times cut into these ancient river beds, forming narrower channels into which they transported their own materials.
Thus, as the successive ‘river
terraces’ were formed, a descending series of steps was created along the sides
of the valleys. In many valleys there are four of these ‘terraces,’ which may
correspond with several glacial stages; in other valleys there are only three;
in others, again, like the valley of the River Inn which flows past Innsbruck
in the Tyrol (Fig. 6), there are five ‘ terraces,’ while in the valley of the
Rhine above Basle there are six, corresponding, it is believed, with the
materials brought down by the four great glaciations and with the river levels
of Postglacial times. In general, therefore, the ‘high terraces’ are the oldest
ones, that is, they are composed of materials brought down during the pluvial
periods of the First, Second, and Third Glacial Stages, while the ‘lower
terraces’ and the ‘lowest terraces' in the alpine regions are composed of
materials borne by the great rivers of the Fourth Glacial and Postglacial
Stages. In the region around the Alps the ‘higher terraces’ are products
chiefly of the third glaciation; in the valley of the Rhine they are visible
near Basle. On the upper Rhine the ‘low terraces’ are products of the fourth
glaciation; they cover vast surfaces and contain remains of the woolly mammoth
(E. primigenius),
an animal distinctive of Fourth Glacial and Postglacial times.
More remote from the glacial regions, but equally subject to the
inundations of glacial times are the ‘high terraces’ along the River Seine,
which are ninety feet above the present level of the river and contain the
remains of mammals characteristic of the First Interglacial Stage, such as the
southern elephant (E. meridionalis),
while the ‘low terraces’ along the Seine are only fifteen feet above the
present level of the river and contain mammals belonging to the Third Interglacial
Stage. Similarly, the ‘high terraces’ of the River Eure contain mammals of First Interglacial times, such as the southern elephant (E. meridionalis)
and Steno’s horse (E. stenonis);
these fossils occur in coarse river sands and gravels which were deposited by a
broad stream that flowed at least ninety feet above the present waters of the Eure.
The human interest which attaches to these dry facts of geology appears
especially in the valleys of the Somme and the Marne in northern France; here
again we find ‘high terraces,’ ‘middle terraces,’ and ‘low terraces’; the
latter are still subject to flooding. In the deep gravels upon each of these
terraces we find the first proofs of human residence, for here occur the
earliest Pre-Chellean and Chellean implements associated with the remains of the hippopotamus, of Merck’s
rhinoceros, and of the straight-tusked elephant (E. antiquus), together with mammals which
are characteristic both of Second and Third Interglacial times.
This raises a very important distinction, which is often misunderstood;
namely, between the materials composing the original terraces and those
subsequently deposited upon the terraces. It appears to be in the latter that
human artifacts are chiefly, if not exclusively, found.
Times or the Loam Stations
The ‘loam’ which washes down over the original sand and gravel
‘terraces’ from the surrounding hills and meadows is of much later date than
the ‘terraces’ themselves, and the archaeologist in the valley of the Somme as
well as in that of the Thames may well be deceived unless he clearly
distinguishes between the newer deposits of gravels and of loams and the far
older gravels and river sands which compose the original ‘terraces.’ This is
well illustrated by the observations of Commont on
the section of St. Acheul. The loams and brick-earth
are of much more recent age than the original gravels and sands of the
‘terraces’ which they overlap and conceal; the lowest and oldest ‘loam’ (limon fendille)
contains Acheulean flints, while the overlying,
‘loam’ contains Mousterian flints. Although occurring on the ‘higher terraces,’
these flints are of somewhat later date than the primitive Chellean flints which occur in the coarse gravels and sands that have collected upon the
very lowest levels.
A similar prehistoric inversion doubtless occurs in the ‘terraces’ of
the Thames, for materials on the ‘highest terrace’ contain Acheulean flints, while materials on the ‘lowest terrace’
belong to a much more recent age.
We have no record of a single Palaeolithic station found in the true original sands and gravels, of the ‘higher terraces’
in any part of Europe; only eoliths are found on the ‘high terrace’ levels, as
at St. Prest.
The earliest palaeoliths occur in the gravels
on both the ‘middle’ and ‘upper terraces’ of the Somme and the Marne, proving
that the gravels were deposited long subsequent to the cutting of the original
terraces. Geikie, moreover, is of the opinion that the valley of the Somme
has remained as it is since early Pleistocene times, and that even the ‘lowest
terrace’ here was completed at that period; this is contrary to the view of Commont, who considers that this ‘lowest terrace’ belongs
to Third Interglacial times; a restudy of the stations along the Thames may
throw light upon this very important difference of opinion.
Times of the ‘Loess’ Stations
The glacial stages were generally times of relatively great humidity, of
heavy rain and snow fall, of full rivers charged with gravels and sands, and
with loam the finest product of the erosive action of ice upon the rocks. This
loam on the barren wastes left bare by the glaciers or on the river borders and
overflow basins was retransported by the winds and
laid down afresh in layers of varying thickness known as ‘loess.’ There was no
‘loess’ formation either in Europe or America during the humid climate of First
Interglacial times, but during the latter part of the Second Interglacial
Stage, again toward the close of the Third Interglacial Stage, and finally
during Postglacial times there were periods of arid climate when the ‘loess’ was
lifted and transported by the prevailing winds over the ‘terraces and plateaus and even to great heights among
the mountain valleys. As observed by Huntington in his interesting book The
Pulse of Asia, even at the present time there are districts where we find
‘loess’ dust filling the entire atmosphere either during the heated months of
summer or during the cold months of winter.
In Pleistocene Europe there were at least three warm or cold arid
periods, accompanied in some phases by prevailing westerly, winds, in which
‘loess’ was widely distributed over northern Germany, covering the ‘river
terraces,’ plateaus, and uplands bordering the Rhine and the Neckar. These
‘loess’ periods can be dated by the fossil remains of mammals which they
contain, also by the stations of the flint quarries in different culture
stages. Thus we find late Acheulean implements in
drifts of ‘loess’ at Villejuif, south of Paris. Among the most famous stations
of late Acheulean times is that of Achenheim, west of Strasburg, and not far distant is the
‘loess’ station of Mommenheim, of Mousterian times;
both belong to the period of the fourth glaciation. An Aurignacian ‘loess’ station is that of Willendorf, Austria.
Times of the Limestone Shelters and Caverns
Beginning in the late or cold Acheulean period, the Palaeolithic hunters commenced to seek
the warm or sheltered side of deepened river-valleys, also the shelter afforded
by overhanging cliffs and the entrances of caverns. It is quite probable that
during the warm season of the year they still repaired to their open flint
quarries along the rivers and on the uplands; in fact, the river Somme was a
favorite resort through Acheulean into Mousterian
times.
In general, however, the open rivers and plateaus were abandoned, and
all the regions of limestone rock favorable to the formation of shelter cliffs,
grottos, and caverns were sought out by the early Palaeolithic men from Mousterian times on; and thus from the beginning of the Mousterian to
the close of the Upper Palaeolithic their lines of
migration and of residence followed the exposures of the limestones which had been laid down by the sea in bygone geologic ages from Carboniferous
to Cretaceous times. The upper valleys of the Rhine and Danube traversed the
white Jurassic limestones which are again exposed in
a broad band along the foot-hills of the Pyrenees, extending far west to the
Cantabrian Alps of modern Spain. In Dordogne the great horizontal plateau of
Cretaceous limestone had been dissected by branching rivers, such as the Vezere, to a depth of two hundred feet. Under overhanging
cliffs long rock shelters were formed, such as that of the Magdalenian station
at La Madeleine.
Many caverns were formed, some of them in early Pleistocene times, by
water percolating from above and resulting in subterranean streams
which issued at the entrance; this formed the expanded grotto, sometimes a
chamber of vast dimensions, such as the Grotte de Gargas. Outside of this, again, may be an abri or shelter of overhanging rock. In other cases the
rock shelter is found quite independent of any cave.
Where the glaciers or ice-caps passed over the summits of the hills the subglacial streams penetrated the limestone of the mountain
and formed vast caverns, such as that of Niaux, near
the river Ariège. Here a nearly horizontal cavern was
formed, extending half a mile into the heart of the mountain. The material with
which the floors of the caverns are covered is either a fine cave loam or the
insoluble remainder of the limestone forming a brown or gray clayey substance.
The Magdalenian artists produced drawings on these soft clays and, in rare
instances, used them for modelling purposes, as in
the Tuc d’Audoubert. The
sands and gravels were also swept in from the streams above and carried by
strong currents along the wall surfaces, smoothing and polishing the limestone
in preparation for the higher forms of Upper Palaeolithic draughtsmanship and painting.
It would appear that the majority of the caverns were formed in pluvial
periods of early glacial times; the formation had been completed, the
subterranean streams had ceased to flow, and the interiors were relatively dry
and free from moisture in Fourth Glacial and Postglacial times, when man first
entered them. There is no evidence, however, that the cavern depths were
generally inhabited, for the obvious reason that there was no exit for the
smoke; the old hearths, are invariably found close to or outside of the
entrance, the only exception being in the entrance to the great cavern of Gargas, where there is a natural chimney for the exit of
smoke. There was no cave life, strictly speaking—it was grotto life; the deep
caves and caverns were probably penetrated only by artists and possibly also by
magicians or priests. It is in the abris or shelters in front of the grottos and in the floors
of the caverns that remarkable prehistoric records are found from late Acheulean times to the very dose of the Palaeolithic,
as in the wonderful grotto in front of the cave at Castillo, near Santander.
Thus, as Obermaier observes : “In Chellean times primitive man was a care-free hunter wandering as he chose in the mild
and pleasant weather, and even the colder climate of the arid ‘loess’ period of
the late Acheulean was not sufficient to overcome his
love of the open; he still made his camp on the plains at the edge of the
forest, or in the shelter of some overhanging cliff.” Only in rare instances,
as at Castillo, were the Acheulean hearths brought
within the entrance line of the grotto.
Interpretation of these four kinds of evidence as to the antiquity of
human culture in western Europe still leads to widely diverse opinions. On the
one hand, we have the high authority of Penck and
Geikie that the Chellean and Acheulean cultures are as ancient as the second long warm interglacial period.
An extreme exponent of the same theory is Wiegers,
who would carry the Pre-Chellean back even into First
Interglacial times. On the other side, Boule, Schuchardt, Obermaier, Schmidt, and the majority of the French
archaeologists place the beginning of the Pre-Chellean culture in Third Interglacial times.
In favor of the latter theory is the strikingly close succession of the
Lower Palaeolithic cultures in the valley of the
Somme, followed by an equally close succession from Acheulean to Magdalenian times, as, for example, in the station of Castillo. It does not
appear possible that a vast interval of time, such as that of the third
glaciation, separated the Chellean from the Mousterian
culture.
On the other hand, in favor of the greater antiquity of the Pre-Chellean and Chellean cultures
may be urged their alleged' association in several localities with very
primitive mammals of early Pleistocene type, namely, the Etruscan rhinoceros,
Steno’s horse, and the saber-tooth tiger, as witnessed in Spain and in the
deposits of the Champs de Mars, at Abbeville.
It is true, moreover, that at points distant from the great ice-fields,
like the valley of the Somme and that of the Marne, we have no other means of
separating glacial from interglacial r times than that afforded by the
deposition and erosion of the ‘terraces’; in fact, the interpretation of the
age of the cultures may be similar to that applied to the age of the mammalian
fauna. There are no proofs of periods of severe cold in western . Europe in any
country remote from the glaciers until the very cold steppe-tundra climate
immediately preceding the fourth glaciation swept the entire land and drove out
the last of the African-Asiatic mammals.
Geographic Changes
The migrations of mammals and of races of men into western Europe from
the Eurasiatic continent on the east and from Africa
on the south were favored or interrupted by the periods of elevation or of
subsidence of the coastal borders of the Aegean, Mediterranean, and North Seas,
and also of the Iberian and
British coast-lines. The maximum period of elevation of the coastal
borders, as represented in the accompanying map (Fig. 12), never occurred in
all portions of the continent of Europe at the same time, because there were oscillations
both on the northern and southern coasts of Europe and Africa. The early
Pleistocene, especially the period of the First Interglacial Stage, was one of
elevation remarkable for the broad land bridges which brought the animal life
of Europe, Africa, and Asia together. The Mediterranean coast rose 300 feet.
Land bridges from Africa were formed at Gibraltar and over to the island of
Sicily, so that for the time there was a free migration of mammalian life north
and south. It is to this that western Europe owes the majestic mammals of
Asiatic and African life which dominated the native fauna.
In general, the elevation of
the continent took place during interglacial, the subsidence during glacial
times, but Great Britain appears to have been almost continuously elevated and
a part of the continent, and was certainly so during the Third Interglacial,
Fourth Glacial, and Postglacial Stages, because there was a free migration of
animal life and of human culture. The Lower Palaeolithic peoples of Pre-Chellean and Chellean times wandered at will from the valley of the Somme to the not far distant
valley of the Thames, interchanging their weapons and inventions. The close
proximity of these stations is well illustrated in the admirable map prepared under the direction of Lord Avebury (Sir
John Lubbock). The relation which elevation and subsidence respectively bear to
the glacial and interglacial stages is believed to be as follows:
Elevation, emergence of the coast-lines from the sea, broad land
connections facilitating migration, retreat of the glaciers, deepening of the
river-valleys, and cutting of terraces. Arid continental climate and deposition
of ‘loess.’
Subsidence, submergence of the coast-lines and advance of the sea,
interruption of land connections and of migration routes, advance of the
glaciers, filling of the river-valleys with the products of glacial erosion,
the sand and gravel materials of which the ‘terraces’ are composed, and subglacial erosion of the loam, from which in arid periods
the ‘loess’ is derived.
Subsidence was the great feature of closing glacial times both in Europe
and America. During the Fourth Glacial and Postglacial Stages the Black and
Caspian Seas and the eastern portion of the Mediterranean were deeply
depressed, while the British Isles were still connected with France, but by a
narrower isthmus than that of early interglacial times. The scattered stations
of Upper Palaeolithic culture found in the British
Isles include one Aurignacian, one Solutrean, two Magdalenian, and two Azilian;
this shows that travel communication with the continent continued throughout
that period, in all probability by means of a land connection. In late
Neolithic times the English Channel was formed, Great Britain became isolated
from Europe, and Ireland lost its land connection first with Wales and then
with Scotland.
Changes of Climate
Penck estimates the
intensity of the cold and of the humidity which prevailed during the glacial
stages by the descent of the snow-line in the Alps, which in the two periods of
greatest glaciation reached from 1,200 m. (3,937 ft.) to 1,500 m. (4, 921 ft.)
below the present snow-level, with the consequent formation of vast ice-caps
hung with glaciers which flowed great distances down the valleys of the Rhone
and of the Rhine and left their moraines at very distant points. The moraines
and drifts of the lesser glaciations, such as the first and fourth, stand
considerably within the boundaries of these outer moraines and drift fields. On
the contrary, the warmer climates of interglacial times are indicated by the
sun-loving plants found at Hotting, along the valley
of the Inn, in the Tyrol, which are proofs of a temperature higher than the
present and of the ascent of the snow-line 300 m. (984 ft.) above the existing
snow-level of the Alps.
The alternation of the cold climates of the glacial stages with the warm
temperate climates of the interglacial stages formed great oscillations of
temperature. The fossil plant life indicates that during the
periods of the First, Second, and Third Interglacial Stages the climate of
western Europe was cooler than it had been during the preceding Pliocene Epoch
and somewhat warmer than it is at the present time in the same localities.
During the First, Second, and Third Glacial Stages there was certainly a marked
lowering of temperature in the regions bordering the great glacial fields. This
is indicated by the arrival in the northern glacial border regions of animals
and plants adapted to arctic and subarctic climates.
It has been generally believed that the whole of western Europe was
extremely cold during these glacial stages, and that the heat-loving animals,
the southern elephants, rhinoceroses, and hippopotami, were driven to the
south, to return only with the renewed warmth of the next interglacial stage.
There is, however, no proof of the departure of these supposedly less
hardy mammals nor of the spread over Europe of the more hardy arctic and steppe
types until the advent of the Fourth Glacial Stage. Then, for the first time,
all western Europe north of the Pyrenees experienced a general fall of
temperature, and conditions of climate prevailed such as are now found in the
arctic tundra regions of the north and in the high steppes of central Asia,
which are swept by dry and cold winter winds. Fluctuations of temperature, of
moisture, and of aridity in Pleistocene time, are evidenced not only by the
rise and fall of the snow-line and the advance and retreat of the ice-caps but
also by the appearance of plant and animal life in the periods of the ‘loess’
deposition, indicating the following cycles of climatic change as witnessed
from beginning to end of the Third Interglacial Stage:
IV. Glacial maximum, cold and moist climate, arctic and cold steppe
fauna and flora.
Cool and dry steppe climate, wide-spread deposition of ‘loess.’
Interglacial maximum, a long period of warm temperate forest and meadow
conditions.
Glacial retreat, cool and moist climate bordering the glacial regions.
III. Glacial maximum, cold and humid climate bordering the glaciers,
favorable to arctic and subarctic plant and animal life.
That great fields of ice and advancing glaciers alone do not constitute
proof of very low temperatures is shown at the present time in southeastern
Alaska, where very heavy snowfall or precipitation causes the accumulation of
vast glaciers, although the mean annual temperature is only 10° Fahr. (5.56° C.) lower than that of southern Germany.
Neumayr estimated that during the Ice Age there was a general lowering of
temperature in Europe of not more than 6° C. (10.8° Fahr.),
and held that even during the glacial advances a comparatively mild climate
prevailed in Great Britain. Martins70 estimated that a lowering of the
temperature to the extent of 40 C. (7.20 Fahr.) would
bring the glaciers of Chamonix down to the level of the plain of Geneva. Penck estimates that, all the atmospheric conditions
remaining the same as at present, a fall of temperature to the extent of 40 to
50 C. would be sufficient to bring back the Glacial Epoch in Europe. These
moderate estimates entirely agree with our theory that animals of African and
Asiatic habit flourished in western Europe to the very close of the Third
Interglacial Stage, and that then for the first time the warm fauna, or faune chaude,
gradually disappeared.
Similarly the hypothesis of extremely warm or subtropical conditions
prevailing in interglacial times as far north as Britain, which originated with
the discovery of the northerly distribution of the hippopotami and
rhinoceroses, animals which we now .associate with the torrid climate of
Africa, is not supported by the study either of the plant life of interglacial
stages or by the .history of the animals themselves. It is quite probable that
both the hippopotami and the rhinoceroses of the ‘warm fauna’ were protected
by hairy covering, although not by the thick undercoating of wool which
protected the woolly rhinoceros and woolly mammoth, animals favoring the borders
of glaciers and flourishing during the last very cold glacial and Postglacial
periods
The combined evidence from all these great events in western Europe
leads us to conclusions somewhat different from those reached by Penck as to the chronology of human culture. In the chart
prepared by Dr. C. A. Reeds in collaboration
with the author, a new correlation of geologic, climatic, human, industrial,
and faunal events is presented. The great waves of glacial advance and retreat
(oblique shading) are based upon Penck’s estimates of
the rise and fall of the snow-line (vertical dotted lines) in the Swiss Alps. The length of these waves corresponds with the relative
duration of the glacial and interglacial stages as estimated by the varying
amounts of erosion and deposition of materials. The entire Palaeolithic or Old Stone Age is thus seen to occupy not more than 125,000 years, or only
the last quarter of the Glacial Epoch, which is estimated as extending over a
period of 525,000 years. The present opinion of the leading archaeologists of
France and Germany, which is shared by the author, is that the Pre-Chellean industry is not older than the Third Interglacial
Stage. As the Piltdown man was found in deposits containing Pre-Chellean implements, he probably lived in the last quarter
of the Glacial Epoch, and not in early Pleistocene times as estimated by some
British geologists. This causes us to regard the Piltdown remains as more
recent than the jaw of Heidelberg, which all authorities agree is probably of
Second Interglacial Age. According to our estimates the Heidelberg man is
nearly twice as ancient as the Piltdown man, while Pithecanthropus (Trinil Race) is four times as ancient. Yet the Piltdown man
must still be regarded as of very great antiquity, for he is four times as
ancient as the final type of Neanderthal man belonging to the Mousterian
industrial stage. The various archaeologic and palaeontologic evidences for this
Mammals of Five Distinct Geographic Regions
As we have already observed, during the whole history of mammalian life
in various parts of the world never did there prevail conditions so unusual and
so complex as those which surrounded the men of the Old Stone Age in Europe.
The successive races of Palaeolithic men in Europe
were all flesh eaters, depending upon the chase. The mammals, first pursued
only for food, utensils, and clothing, finally became subjects of artistic
appreciation and endeavor which resulted in a remarkable aesthetic development.
4. Steppes and deserts. Dry, elevated plateaus and steppes of eastern Europe and central Asia. Fauna—desert ass and horse, saiga antelope, jerboa. 5. Tundras and barren grounds within or near the arctic circle. Fauna—reindeer, musk-ox, arctic fox. In the warm plains, forests, and rivers of southern Asia and northern Africa there developed the elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, lions, hyaenas, and jackals, which, taken together, may be known as the African-Asiatic fauna. It contains altogether fourteen species of mammals. The great geographic area from the far east to the far west over which ranged similar or identical species of these pachyderms and carnivores is indicated by the oblique lines in the geographic chart.
The north temperate belt of Asia and Europe, with its hardy forests and genial meadows, was the home of the even more highly varied Eurastatic Forest and Meadow fauna. This includes twenty-six or more species. Of these the red deer, or stag, was most characteristic of the forests and the bison and wild cattle of the meadows. Even at the very beginning of Pleistocene times there appear the stag, the wild boar, and the roe-deer with their natural pursuers, the wolf and the brown bear. From the northern woods came the moose and the wolverene. Most of these mammals were so similar to existing forms that the older naturalists placed them in existing species, but the tendency now is to separate them or place them in distinct subspecies. Mingled with these forest and meadow mammals were a few others which have since become extinct, such as the giant deer (Megaceros), the giant beaver (Trogontherium), and the primitive forest and meadow horses. From this region also there developed the cave-bear (Ursus spelaeus). Certainly it is astonishing to find the remains of these mammals mingled with those from southern Asia and Africa, as is frequently the case. In early glacial times the bison and wild cattle mingled freely with the hippopotami and rhinoceroses, but in late glacial and Postglacial times they occurred as companions of the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros. In prehistoric times they survived with the mammals brought from the Orient by the Neolithic agriculturists. During a great glaciation, but especially during the severe climate of late Pleistocene times, the Alpine mammals were driven down from the heights into the plains and among the lower mountains and foot-hills. Thus the ibex, chamois, and argali sheep from the Altai Mountains are represented both in drawing and in sculpture by the men of the Reindeer Period. Still more remarkable is the arrival in Europe of the Steppe Fauna of Russia and of western Siberia, mammals which now survive in the vast Kirghiz steppes, east of the Caspian Sea and the Ural Mountains, where the climate is one of hot, dry summers and prolonged cold winters, with sweeping dust and snow storms. These animals are very hardy, alert, and swift of foot, such as the jerboa, the saiga antelope, the wild asses, and the wild horses, including the Przewalski type, which still survives in the desert of Gobi. From this region also came the Elasmothere (E. sibiricum), with its single giant horn above the eyes. Very distinctive of the fauna frequenting the caverns are the small rodents, including the dwarf pikas, the steppe hamsters, and the lemmings. These animals were attracted into Europe during the 'steppe' and 'loess' periods of cold, dry climate. The advance of the great Scandinavian glaciers from the north crowded to the south the Tundra or Barren Ground fauna of the arctic circle. The herald of this fauna during the First Glacial Stage was the musk-ox, which appears in Sussex, and then came the reindeer of the existing Scandinavian type. These animals are followed by the woolly mammoth (E. primigenius) and the woolly rhinoceros (D. antiquitatis) with their panoply of hair and wool which had long been developing in the north. Finally in the Fourth Glacial Stage arrived the lemming of the river Obi, also the more northern banded lemming, the arctic fox, the wolverene, and the ermine, as well as the arctic hare. These tundra mammals for a short period mingled in places with survivors of the African-Asiatic fauna, such as Merck's rhinoceros and the straight-tusked elephant (E. antiquus). In general, they swept southward as far as the Pyrenees over country which had long been enjoyed by the African-Asiatic mammals, while the hippopotami and the southern elephants retreated still farther south and became extinct. The only survivors of the great African-Asiatic fauna in Fourth Glacial and Postglacial times were the hyaenas (H. crocuta spelaea) and the lions (Felis leo spelaea). The lion frequently appears in the drawings of the cavemen. The various species belonging to these five great faunae apparently succeed each other, and wherever their remains are mingled with the palaeoliths, as along the rivers Somme, Marne, and Thames, or in the hearths of the shelters and caverns, they become of extreme interest both in their bearing on the chronology of man and on the development of human culture, art, and industry. They also tell the story of the sequence of climatic conditions both in the regions bordering the glaciers and in the more temperate regions remote from the ice-caps. Thus they guide the anthropologist over the difficult gaps where the geologic record is limited or undecipherable. The general succession of these great faunae is illustrated in the above table. |
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