Man and the Glacial Period

by G. Frederick Wright

Other crania from various Quaternary deposits in Europe seem to warrant the inference that this type of man was the prevalent one during the early part of the Palæolithic age. As long ago as 1700 a skull of this type was exhumed in Canstadt, a village in the neighbourhood of Stuttgart, in Würtemberg. This was found in coexistence with the extinct animals whose bones we have described as so often appearing in the high-level river-gravel of the Glacial age. But the importance of the discovery at Canstadt was not appreciated until about the middle of the present century. From the priority of the discovery, and of the discussion among German anthropologists concerning it, it has been thought proper, however, by some to give the name of this village to the race and call it the “Canstadt race.” But, whatever name prevails, it is important in our reading to keep in mind that the man of Canstadt, the man of Neanderthal, and the man of Spy are identical in type, and probably in age. Similar discoveries have been made in various other places. Among these are a lower jaw of the same type discovered in 1865 by M. Dupont, at Naulette, in the valley of the Lesse, in Belgium, and associated with the remains of extinct animals; a jawbone found in a grotto at Arcy; a fragment of a skull found in 1865 by Faudel, in the loess of Eguisheim, near Colmar; a skull at Olmo, discovered in 1863, in a compact clayey deposit forty-five feet below the surface; and a skull discovered in 1884 at Marcilly.

M. Dupont has brought to light much additional testimony to glacial man from other caves in different parts of Belgium. In all he has explored as many as sixty. Three of these, in the valley of the Montaigle, situated about one hundred feet above the river, contained both remains of man and many bones of the mammoth and other associated animals, which had evidently been brought in for food.

In the hilly parts of Germany, also, and in Hungary, and even in the Ural Mountains in Russia, and in one of the provinces of Siberia, the remains of the rhinoceros, and most of the other animals associated with man in glacial times, have been found in the cave deposits which have been examined. Though it can not be directly proved that these animals were associated with man in any of these places, still it is interesting to see how wide-spread the animals were in northern Europe and Asia during the Glacial period.

Some northern animals, also, spread at this time into southern Europe—remains of the reindeer having been discovered on the south slope of the Pyrenees, but the remains of the mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, and the musk ox, have not been found so far south.

African species of the elephant, however, seem at one time to have had free range throughout Spain, and the hippopotamus roamed in vast herds over the valleys of Sicily, while several species of pygmy elephants seem to be peculiar to the island of Malta.

In the case of all the cave deposits referred to (with possibly the exception of those of Victoria, England, and Cae Gwyn, Wales), the evidence of man’s existence during the Glacial period is inferential, and consists largely in the fact that he was associated with various extinct animals which did not long survive that period, or with animals that have since retired from Europe to their natural habitat in mountain-heights or high latitudes. The men whose remains are found in the high-level river-drift, and in the caverns described, were evidently not in possession of domestic animals, as their bones are conspicuous for their absence in all these places. The horse, which would seem to be an exception, was doubtless used for food, and not for service.

If we were writing upon the general subject of the antiquity and development of the human race, we should speak here in detail of several other caves and rock shelters in France and southern Europe, where remains of man belonging to an earlier period have been found. We should mention the rock shelter of Cro-Magnon in the valley of Vezère, as well as that of Mentone, where entire human skeletons were found. But it is doubtful if these and other remains from caves which might be mentioned belong in any proper sense to the Glacial period. The same remarks should be made also with reference to the lake-dwellings in Switzerland, of which so much has been written in late years. All these belong to a much later age than the river-drift man of whom we are speaking, and of whom we have such abundant evidence both in Europe and in America.

Fig. 82.—Tooth of Machairodus neogæus, × 16 (drawn from a cast).
Fig. 83.—Perfect tooth of an Elephas, found in Stanislaus County, California, 18 natural size.