A slow sinking of the land, which submerged beneath the ocean all the countries to the north and north-east of Europe, marks the end of the quaternary period, and the beginning of the present era in the geological sense of the word. This era is characterised, from the archæological point of view, by the substitution for the “earlier stone age” (palæolithic period) of another “age,” or, better, of another stage of civilisation, that of the later stone age (neolithic).
However, this “age” did not come in abruptly, after a lapse of time, the hiatus of ancient palæethnologists, during which man retired, it was supposed, from Central Europe and emigrated towards the north after the reindeer.[349] There must have been a transitional or mesolithic period.[350] Nor was neolithic civilisation established everywhere at the same time. Thus the Scandinavian peninsula, from which the glaciers have not yet altogether withdrawn, was in course of formation during this period.[351] The “neolithic folk,” settling at first in Denmark, then in Gothland, have left us in the kitchen-middens (kitchen refuse, accumulations of shells) certain chipped stone implements, a sort of hatchet of a special form, contemporaneous with the neolithic tools of the rest of Europe.
These tools are associated in the geological beds and prehistoric stations with other objects which denote among the Europeans of this period a fairly advanced civilisation: knowledge of agriculture, pottery, the weaving of stuffs, the rearing of cattle.
The “neolithic people” constructed pile-dwellings near lakesides, in Switzerland, France, Italy, Ireland; they buried their dead under dolmens, and raised other megalithic monuments (upright stones, the rows at Carnac, etc.), of which the meaning has not yet been cleared up.
As may have been seen from this brief account, it is almost perfectly well known what were the stages of civilisation of the Europeans in the quaternary and neolithic periods. It is different with regard to the physical type of these Europeans. In fact, of interglacial man, contemporary of the Elephas antiquus, the maker of those flint implements exhumed from the lowest beds of the oldest quaternary alluvia, we have no remains, except perhaps two molar teeth, found by Nehring in the Taubach station (near Weimar), and some other disputed fragments (Neanderthal, Brux, and Tilbury skulls). This statement, made for the first time by Boule in 1888, is now admitted by many palæethnologists.[352] As far as man contemporary with the mammoth (Elephas primigenius) and the reindeer is concerned, we possess a certain number of skulls and bones from the river drifts and caves. But a doubt exists as to the beds in which many of these specimens were found, and consequently as to their date. Eliminating all those of unknown or uncertain age, we have at the most, for the whole of Europe, but a dozen skulls or fragments of skulls and a score of other bones genuinely quaternary.[353] Evidently that is insufficient for the forming of an opinion on the physical type of quaternary Europeans. However, one significant fact is elicited from an examination of this small series, and it is this: that all the skulls composing it are very long, very dolichocephalic. The exceptions put forward, like the skulls of upper Grenelle (Seine), Furfooz (Belgium), La Truchère (Saône-et-Loire), Valle do Areciro (Portugal), do not conflict with this assertion; there are reasons for believing that certain of these skulls belong to the neolithic period, and that others date from the mesolithic period, or, at the very outside, from the end of the quaternary period. These then, even admitting the authenticity of their date, would only be isolated precursors of the neolithic brachycephals with whom we shall deal further on.
Let us return to our palæolithic dolichocephals. These appear to belong to two distinct types, the so-called Neanderthal or Spy type, referred to the Mousterian period, very well represented by the skulls and bones found at Spy, near Namur in Belgium; then the type of the Magdalenian period, represented by the skulls exhumed at Laugerie-Basse and Chancelade (Dordogne). The first of these types is characterised by marked dolichocephaly (ceph. ind. from 70 to 75.3), by the exceedingly low and retreating forehead, by the prominent brow ridges (Fig. [86]), and probably by a low stature (about 1 m. 59). Several pithecoid characters are observable on the skull and bones of this type, the presence of which has been noted, from England (skull from Bury St. Edmunds, in Suffolk), Belgium (Spy skull, La Naulette jaw), and perhaps the Rhenish province (Neanderthal skull), to the Pyrenees (jaw found at Malarnau, Ariège), Bohemia, Moravia (Predmost and Podbaba skulls), and Italy (Olmo skull). Like all the other prehistoric races, that of Neanderthal or Spy has not entirely disappeared; Neanderthaloid skulls are found, few in number it is true, in several prehistoric or historic burial-places (at Furfooz in Belgium, in the dolmens of France, England, Ireland, etc.). Scattered here and there, some rare individuals may still be observed in the populations of the present day showing the characters of this race, according to the statements of Roujoux, Quatrefages, Virchow, Kollmann, and other anthropologists.[354] The second so-called Laugerie-Chancelade race (Hervé) is represented at the present day by only three or four skulls and some other bones found at Laugerie-Basse, Chancelade (Dordogne), and Sordes (Landes). It is characterised by a dolichocephaly almost equal to that of the preceding race, but it differs from it in the high and broad forehead, the capacious skull, the absence of the brow ridges, the high orbits, and especially the face with projecting cheek-bones, high and broad at the same time (Fig. [87]). Its stature is rather low. This is the type to which approximates the race of the Baumes-Chaudes of Hervé or the true race of Cro-Magnon, which appeared quite at the end of the Magdalenian, if not at the transitional or mesolithic period. The latter race differs from the former in its very pronounced dolichocephaly (ceph. ind. from 63 to 74.8), its lower face and orbits, its very lofty stature (from 1 m. 71 to 1 m. 80), and many other characters.[355] We see then, at the beginning of the neolithic period, the second quaternary dolichocephalic race still existing slightly modified, but we also see the earliest brachycephals appearing along with it.
FIG. 86.—Spy skull, first quaternary race.
(After Fraipont and Jacques.)