Primitive Man

by Louis Figuier

Fig. 40.—Rock-shelter at Bruniquel, a supposed Habitation of Man during the Reindeer Epoch.

On the left bank of the river Aveyron, under the overhanging shelter of one of the highest rocks of Bruniquel and in close proximity to a château, the picturesque ruins of which still stand on the brow of the cliff above, there was discovered, in 1866, a fire-hearth of the pre-historic period; this hearth and its surroundings have afforded us the most complete idea of one of the rock-shelters of man during the reindeer epoch.

This rock, known by the name of Montastruc, is about 98 feet high, and it overhangs the ground below for an extent of 46 to 49 feet. It covers an area of 298 square yards. In this spot, M. V. Brun, the Director of the Museum of Natural History at Montauban, found a host of objects of various descriptions, the study of which has furnished many useful ideas for the history of this epoch of primitive humanity.

By taking advantage of the photographic views of the pre-historic settlement of Bruniquel, which M. V. Brun has been kind enough to forward to us, we have been enabled to compose the sketch which is presented in fig. 40 of a rock-shelter, or an open-air settlement of man in the reindeer epoch.

Men during the reindeer epoch did not possess any notion of agriculture. They had not as yet subdued and domesticated any animal so as to profit by its strength, or to ensure by its means a constant supply of food. They were, therefore, like their forefathers, essentially hunters; and pursued wild animals, killing them with their spears or arrows. The reindeer was the animal which they chiefly attacked. This mammal, which then existed all over Europe, in the centre as well as in the south (although it has now retired or migrated into the regions of the extreme north), was for the man of this period all that it nowadays is to the Laplander—the most precious gift of nature. They fed upon its flesh and made their garments of its skin, utilising its tendons as thread in the preparation of their dress; its bones and its antlers they converted into all kinds of weapons and implements. Reindeer's horn was the earliest raw material in the manufactures of these remote ages, and to the man of this epoch was all that iron is to us.

The horse, the ox, the urus, the elk, the ibex, and the chamois, all formed a considerable part of the food of men during this epoch. They were in the habit of breaking the long bones and the skulls of the recently-killed animals, in order to extract the marrow and the brain, which they ate all steaming with the natural animal heat, as is done in the present day by certain tribes in the Arctic regions. The meat of this animal was cooked on their rough hearths; for they did not eat it raw as some naturalists have asserted. The animal bones which have been found, intermingled with human remains, in the caverns of this epoch bear evident traces of the action of fire.

To this animal prey they occasionally added certain birds, such as the great heath-cock, willow-grouse, owl, &c. When this kind of game fell short, they fell back upon the rat. Round the hearthstone, in the cave of Chaleux, M. Dupont found more than twenty pounds weight of the bones of water-rats, half roasted.

Fish is an article of food which has always been much sought after by man. By mere inference we might, therefore, readily imagine that man during the reindeer epoch fed on fish as well as the flesh of animals, even if the fact were not attested by positive evidence. This evidence is afforded by the remains of fish-bones which are met with in the caves of this epoch, intermingled with the bones of mammals, and also by sketches representing parts of fishes, which are found roughly traced on a great number of fragments of bone and horn implements.

The art of fishing, therefore, must certainly have been in existence during the reindeer epoch. We cannot assert that it was practised during that of the great bear and the mammoth; but, as regards the period we are now considering, no doubt can be entertained on the point. In an article on the 'Origine de la Navigation et de la Pêche,' M. G. de Mortillet expresses himself as follows: