Women of England

by Bartlett Burleigh James

The sanitary condition of the homes of these hunting tribes was of the worst description; the offal and refuse were thrown at the very doors of the cave, there to decay and poison the air. The caves themselves were smoke-begrimed and foul, for house cleaning had not yet entered into the economy of woman. While, by reason of their simple, open-air life, they were a vigorous race, the ills to which the cave-dwellers fell a prey, the injuries they suffered in warfare or from the attacks of wild beasts, or the diseases contracted through unsanitary living, must have been sources of great dread to them, as they were without any medical knowledge of which we have trace. When the women, particularly, became too sick to perform their allotted tasks, they were carried out to die or to become the victims of savage beasts; but this was only one of the inevitable phases of an existence that was replete with tragedies.

From the evidence afforded by the great abundance of arrow heads and spear points surviving from this period, there is no doubt that the cave men were much given to warfare. Aside from the natural pugnacity and ferocity of savage races, which lead them to fight upon very little provocation, there was with the cave-dwellers another source of constant hostility. As has been stated with reference to the river-drift people, the women were not permanently attached to the men. It is just as true that they were not permanently attached to their tribes, for when, through disease or the ravages of wild beasts, the women of any horde became greatly diminished in number, their ranks were recruited by forays upon other tribes. These attacks for the purpose of stealing the women of their enemies were especially provocative of fierce conflicts, as the depletion of its stock of women often seriously crippled a tribe and sometimes even threatened its extinction. Such forcible transfers of ownership must have added greatly to the hardness of the woman's lot, for by such means many mothers were permanently separated from their offspring.

The weight of probability and of evidence seems to leave little room for doubt that the early inhabitants of Britain were cannibals. While there was no scarcity of game as a rule, it is quite likely that these savage peoples, as those of the same grade of culture in all times, when experiencing the delirium of a victory over their enemies, put to death by cruel tortures the unhappy captives that fell into their hands, and then, to complete their triumph, roasted and ate the flesh of the slain. Aside from the deductive probability of the case, human bones dating back to this period have been found along with the remains of weapons and in association with the ashes of camp fires; and in such cases the bones have invariably been broken, in order to extract from them their marrow. The story of the battle, the tortures, and the feast is eloquently suggested by the silent memorials that have been preserved through the lapse of ages. As we picture the far-off scene of human savagery, the figure of woman flits through the lights and shadows of the horrid orgy: for she it was who prepared the gruesome repast; it was in defence of her, perhaps, that the fierce battle was fought; some of her own near of kin, it may be, she has been forced to prepare for the unnatural appetites of her enemies. Possibilities! but read in the light of the times, they become probabilities, and probabilities furnish much of the data of history.

The tragedy of woman's life is again brought before us with startling vividness when we look upon the skull of a woman of this remote race, as it lies in a cave, with a little stone hatchet beside it, where it was ruthlessly cast after the commission of a bloody crime; for in that skull is a jagged hole into which fits the blade of the hatchet. The scene, sketched from a remote past, might have been an occurrence of yesterday, so close to us is it brought by the silent witnesses; these and similar relics disclose the sad lot of woman in that savage society.

There are fuller evidences of the state of domestic resources among the women of the cave-dwellers than with those of the river-drift. The remains show, too, a greater variety and adaptation; for while there is no clear proof of the existence of pottery, yet the cave people appear not to have lacked substitutes for it. Vessels for boiling meats were probably fashioned of small stones cemented together, and they had, also, vessels of hollowed wood. The skulls of animals served well for drinking purposes, besides which receptacles for holding liquids were made from the skins of beasts. Water was heated by placing hot stones in a vessel containing it, by which means the fluid could be raised to any desired temperature. Long flint flakes set in handles answered for knives; when rounded at the edge, the same material made serviceable scrapers. Spoons were constructed from pieces of reindeer antlers, hollowed at the thick end, or if they were intended to be used to scoop out the marrow from bones, the tapered end was hollowed. For their food, the cave-dwellers, though they possessed no domesticated animals, had a wide choice of large and small game, birds, fish, reptiles, and grubs; to these they added edible roots and berries.

This almost indispensable domestic handicraft was not, however, the limit of their achievement in designing. We have seen that woman's thought and some of her activities were applied to the production of merely decorative objects. She had already acquired an appreciative taste for the auxiliary attractions of personal adornment. The art of designing certainly found a place in the occupations of these cave-dwellers, and the most familiar animated objects would be their necessary choice. Hence, we may readily conceive that, in the moments of respite from the chase, the rude artist of this age would make of the cave passages a canvas for his work and thereon delineate the animals whose importance to his existence rendered them the most interesting objects. Nor, for this reason, would his subject fail of appreciative criticism and of educational value.

It is impossible to state the nature or the extent of the social organization among these people, but that there must have been something of the sort there can be no doubt. It seems equally plausible that there could have been no recognition of law in the lives of these passionate savages, excepting as the will of some more than ordinarily forceful warrior was for the time so recognized. An association of this kind admitted of the sloughing of the groups whenever a difference of inclination or of interest suggested such a course. Promiscuity undoubtedly remained the characteristic form of the relation of the sexes, the conditions of life admitting of no more enduring relations.

The culture of the peoples of the river-drift and of the caves signified little in British civilization, as these shadowy tribes passed completely out of view. For a period of time that could be expressed only in the term of vague geological computation, the country remained devoid of inhabitants. Meantime, changes were wrought in Britain's physical features. The land became insular, although the subsidence that gave rise to the English Channel was not yet complete. In an indirect way, the earliest peoples may be said to have passed on the elements of their culture; for, while there was a lapse in the continuity of social development, the Neolithic races that are next met with in Britain became the inheritors of the culture of the ruder hunter stages of society represented by the river-drift and cave peoples.

The social grade of the Neolithic races was a great advance over that of the peoples last considered. Instead of bands of nomadic wanderers, we find a pastoral people whose migrations were doubtless periodical and made only in search of new pastures. Hunting did not form an important part of their lives, for their food was supplied by the flesh of domesticated animals and the cereals that they raised for their own needs and, in the winter season, for those of their stock.