Primitive Man

by Louis Figuier

In England we have the Kent's Hole and Brixham caverns, near Torquay in Devonshire, the latter of which is many hundred yards in extent; the caves of the Gower peninsula, in Glamorganshire (South Wales), which have been carefully studied within the last few years by Messrs. Falconer and Wood; in these were found flint instruments along with bones of the Elephas antiquus and the Rhinoceros hemitæchus, species which were still more ancient than the mammoth and the Rhinoceros tichorhinus; those of Kirkdale, in Yorkshire, explored by Dr. Buckland, the geologist; those near Wells in Somersetshire, Wokey Hole, Minchin Hole, &c.

We must mention, in the north of Italy, the caves of Chiampo and Laglio, on the edge of the Lake of Como, in which, just as at Vergisson, fragments of rough pottery have been discovered, indicating some degree of progress in the manufacture; also the caves in the neighbourhood of Palermo, and especially those of San Ciro and Macagnone.

In the last-mentioned cave, in the midst of an osseous breccia which rose to the roof, Dr. Falconer collected flint instruments, splinters of bone, pieces of baked clay and wood charcoal mixed up with large land-shells (Helix vermiculata), in a perfect state of preservation, horses' teeth, and the excrements of the hyæna, all cemented together in a deposit of carbonate of lime. In a lower bed were found the bones of various species of the hippopotamus, the Elephas antiquus, and other great mammals.

Lastly, Spain, Algeria, Egypt, and Syria also present to our notice caves belonging to the Stone Age.

In the New World various bone-caverns have been explored. We must especially mention Brazil, in which country Lund searched no less than eight hundred caves of different epochs, exhuming in them a great number of unknown animal species. In one of these caves, situated near the Lake of Sumidouro, Lund found some human bones which had formed a part of thirty individuals of different ages, and were "in a similar state of decomposition, and in similar circumstances to the bones of various extinct species of animals."

Thus far we have designedly omitted to mention the Belgian caves. They have, in fact, furnished us with such remarkable relics of former ages that, in dealing with them, we could not confine ourselves to a mere notice. The caves in the neighbourhood of Liége, which were explored in 1833 by Schmerling, deserve to be described in some detail.

Schmerling examined more than forty caves in the Valley of the Meuse and its tributaries. The access to some of these caves was so difficult that in order to reach them it was necessary for the explorer to let himself down by a cord, and then to crawl flat on his face through narrow galleries, so as to make his way into the great chambers; there he was obliged to remain for hours, and sometimes whole days, standing up to his knees in mud, with water dripping from the walls upon his head, while overlooking the workmen breaking up with their pick-axes the layer of stalagmite, so as to bring to light the bone earth—the records on which are inscribed the palpable evidences of the high antiquity of man. Schmerling was compelled to accomplish a perilous expedition of this kind in his visit to the cave of Engis, which has become celebrated by the two human skulls found there by him.

Nearly all the caves in the province of Liége contain scattered bones of the great bear, the cave-hyæna, the mammoth, and the rhinoceros, intermixed with those of species which are still living, such as the wolf, the wild boar, the roe, the beaver, the porcupine, &c. Several of them contained human bones, likewise much scattered and rubbed; they were found in all positions, and at every elevation, sometimes above and sometimes below the above-mentioned animal remains; from this it may be concluded that these caves had been filled with running water, which drifted in all kinds of débris. None of them, however, contained any gnawed bones, or the fossil excrement of any animal species, which puts an end to the hypothesis that these caves had been used as dens by wild beasts. Here and there bones were found belonging to the same skeleton, which were in perfect preservation, and lying in their natural juxtaposition; they were probably drifted into the cave by gently flowing water, while still covered with their flesh, and no movement of the ground had since separated them. But no complete skeleton has as yet been discovered, even among the smaller species of mammiferous animals, the disjunction of which is generally less complete.

In almost all the caves Schmerling met with flint implements chipped into the form of hatchets and knives, and he calls attention to the fact "that none of them could have been introduced into the caves at a posterior epoch, as they were found in the same position as the animal remains which accompanied them." In the cave of Clokier, about two and a half miles from Liége, he picked up a polished bone in the shape of a needle, having an eye pierced at the base; in the cave of Engis he likewise found a carved bone, and also some worked flints.