The human species

by A. de Quatrefages

IV. The races of Furfooz, coming after those whose history we have just sketched, must have come in contact, and sometimes have formed connections with them. The clearest demonstration of this fact is at Solutré, where, side by side with Cro-Magnon skulls, two heads were found belonging to the race of Grenelle. Intellectual and social development must have progressed almost equally among men united into a single tribe.

Our brachycephali have, however, had their special centres of population where we can examine them in their home. The researches of M. Dupont have been chiefly devoted to Belgium and the valley of the Lesse. To give an idea of what the men of Furfooz were, we need do no more than reproduce an abridged account of all that the learned explorer of these caverns has said upon the subject.

V. The men of the Lesse, like those of the Vézère, inhabited caverns. One of their complete stations comprised the grotto where they lived, and a funeral grotto. M. Dupont found them almost in juxtaposition at Furfooz, where the Trou des Nutons presented all the characters of a human habitation, and the Trou du Frontal those of a place of sepulture. These two localities alone would have furnished many materials for the history of these ancient populations. Nevertheless the Trou de Chaleux excels them in this respect. It was long inhabited by man, who left there a considerable accumulation of that refuse which is now turned to such good account by science. The roof one day fell in; the inhabitants escaped, leaving all that was buried in their dwelling. Thus, when this heap of rubbish came to be disturbed by the pick-axe, all was found just as it had been left at the moment of the catastrophe, and it is with good reason that the Grotto of Chaleux has been called a little quaternary Pompeii.

The man of Chaleux chiefly employed flint and reindeer horn to supply his several wants. The former was used for the greater number of his stock of implements; but he gave himself little trouble in varying or perfecting the form. Narrow, elongated blades cut with a single blow upon one side, with two or three upon the opposite face, and what are called knives, seem to be the model from which all the implements are worked. Notched upon one edge they became saws; rounded and recut at one extremity they were transformed into scrapers, well adapted for scraping and taking the hair off skins; tapered and chipped to a point, they furnished bodkins, piercers, etc. As for reindeer horn, it was divided into pieces from 10 to 15 centimetres (3·9-5·9 inches) long, and then shaped so as to serve for lances or javelins. They may possibly have sometimes received a point of flint. But M. Dupont assures us that there are no grounds for supposing that the bow and arrow were in use among these troglodytes.

The arms of the tribe of Chaleux, were then much inferior to those of the Vézère or of Solutré. It still, however, hunted large game, and knew also how to obtain the small. Its ancient dwelling-place has furnished the remains of numerous horses, several oxen, some reindeer, sixteen foxes, five wild boars, three chamois, three aurochs, one brown bear, one Saïga antelope, etc.

The bones also of the hare, squirrel, water-rat and Norwegian rat, have been found here; the remains of several birds, amongst others those of the ptarmigan; and remains of fresh water fish. The fauna of the Trou des Nutons is almost identical, but the proportion of species is sometimes inverted. A much smaller number of horses and much greater number of wild boars have been discovered there. Here again, as in the stations of the Cro-Magnon race, the larger species are scarcely represented by more than the bones of the head and limbs, all those containing marrow having been carefully broken up.

Like the preceding race, that of Furfooz made use of the skins of slain animals for clothing. This is proved by the bone needles found at Chaleux. But they are here much ruder in form than those of La Madeleine and other similar stations. Short and thick, they might be taken for small bodkins were it not for the eye with which they are pierced.

VI. The Belgian troglodytes were, from many points of view, far behind those of Périgord and Mâconnais. The monuments of their industry are much inferior to all that we have seen amongst their predecessors, and they show no indication of the artistic aptitudes so remarkable in the man of the Vézère. They surpass him however, in one essential point; they had invented, or received from elsewhere, the art of manufacturing a rude kind of pottery, of which M. Dupont has found the remains in all the stations which he has explored, and obtained in the Trou du Frontal fragments in sufficient number to restore the vase of which they had once formed part.

This, and some other facts, which it would take too long to discuss here, have led some of the most competent savants, amongst others MM. Cartailhac and Cazalis de Fondouce, to regard the Trou du Frontal and the other contemporary stations as belonging to the neolithic stone period, and not to the quaternary epoch.

But the character of the fauna discovered in the grottoes of Chaleux and Furfooz makes it impossible in our opinion to accept this opinion, which rests chiefly upon archæological considerations. To refer the age of polished stone to an epoch when the chamois, bouquetin, and Saïga antelope lived in Belgium with the Norwegian rat and the ptarmigan, would be making it very distant. This question may perhaps call for further study; but the juxtaposition of these species in the neighbourhood of Dinant is, in our opinion, a proof that the quaternary period had not then drawn to a close.