A Manual of the Antiquity of Man

by J. P. MacLean

The cave of Gourdan (Haute-Garonne) contained the largest collection of implements of bone and horn ever discovered. The stones and reindeer horns are carved with great care, and indicate a high degree of artistic taste. There are sketches made of the reindeer, stag, chamois, goat, bison, horse, wolf, boar, monkey, badger, antelope, fishes, and birds, and also the representations of some plants. In the lowest layer of the soil the most perfect works occur, and they grow less as the surface is approached. Several of those implements called "batons of command" occurred, ornamented with animals' heads. On the rib of a horse was carved an antelope, and on the bone of a bird various figures—plants, reindeer, and a fish. This cave was made the subject of a report by M. Piette before the Paris Anthropological Society.

Fig. 14.
The Fossil Man of Mentone.

The fossil man of Mentone, found in a grotto of Mentone, a village near Nice, for some time past has produced much comment among scientists. The skeleton was discovered in undisturbed earth; at a depth of twenty-one feet. The cause of the discussion is that the skeleton is accompanied by a multiplicity of bone-tools, needles, chisels, a baton of command, a necklace, various species of the deer, indicating the reindeer epoch, but surrounded also by the remains of the cave-bear, cave-hyena, and woolly-haired rhinoceros. Dr. Garrigou arrives at the conclusion that this cave was first inhabited by men of the preceding epoch, or inter-glacial, and during the reindeer epoch was used as a place of burial.[64] The attitude of the skeleton was that of repose (see Fig. 14). It was stained by oxide of iron. The tibiæ, or shin-bones, present a noticeable feature by being more flattened than in the European of the present time.

In the same neighborhood there have more recently been discovered, in different caves, four other human skeletons. They were all stained with oxide of iron, and two of them surrounded with pierced sea-shells, teeth of the stag, constituting the remains of necklaces and bracelets. With one skeleton, which belonged to a large individual, were discovered implements of stone and bone, tooth of a cave-bear, bones of other animals, and shells of edible marine mollusks. The other two skeletons were those of children, and not accompanied by either implements or ornaments.

The other bone caves of France, which have afforded much valuable information, and belonging to this epoch, are: La Gorge d'Enfer, Liveyre, Pey de l'Aze, Combe-Granal, Le Moustier and Badegoule (Dordogne), cave of Bize (Aude), cave of La Vache (Ariége), cave of Savigné (Vienne), grottos of La Balme and Bethenas, in Dauphiné, the settlement of Solutré, the cave of Lourdes (Hautes-Pyrénées), and the cave of Espalungue (Basses-Pyrénées)—the last two date back to the most ancient period of the reindeer epoch.

The principal objects found in these caves, and the rock-shelters are worked flakes, scrapers, cores, awls, lance-heads, cutters, hammers, and mortar-stones. These works, though unpolished, are but little ruder than those of the Esquimaux or the North American Indian.

Belgian Caverns.—Under the auspices of the Belgian government M. Edward Dupont examined more than twenty caves on the banks of the Lesse, in the province of Namur. Among these were four, in which occurred numerous traces of the reindeer-man, namely, Trou du Frontal, Trou Rosette, Trou des Nutons, and Trou de Chaleux.

The cavern Trou de Frontal was a place of burial, and similar to the cave of Aurignac. The mouth of the cave was closed by a slab of sandstone, and within were the remains of fourteen human beings belonging to persons of various ages, and some of them to infants scarcely a year old. In front of the cave was an esplanade, where were celebrated the funeral feasts, and which was marked by hearth-stone, traces of fire, flint-knives, bones of animals, shells, etc. The human bones were intermixed with a considerable number of the bones of the reindeer and other animals, as well as the different kinds of implements. Among the remains were two perfect human skulls, in a good state of preservation. The bones were discovered in a state of great confusion, which M. Dupont thinks was caused by the disturbance of water. Sir John Lubbock regards the disturbance of the bones as due to foxes and badgers.[65]