Fig. 44.—The Canine Tooth of a Wolf, bored so as to be used as an ornament.
The horny portion of the ear of the horse or ox (fig. 45), was likewise used for the same purpose, that is, as an object of adornment.
Fig. 45.—Ornament made of the bony part of a Horse's Ear.
It becomes a question whether man at this epoch had any belief in a future life, and practised anything which bore a resemblance to religious worship. The existence, round the fire-hearths of the burial-caverns in Belgium, of large fossil elephant (mammoth's) bones—a fact which has been pointed out by M. Édouard Dupont—gives us some reason for answering this question in the affirmative. According to M. Morlot, the practice of placing bones round caverns still survives, as a religious idea, among the Indians. We may, therefore, appeal to this discovery as a hint in favour of the existence of some religious feeling among the men who lived during the reindeer epoch.
In the tombs of this epoch are found the weapons and knives which men carried during their lifetime, and sometimes even a supply of the flesh of animals used for food. This custom of placing near the body of the dead provisions for the journey to be taken post mortem is, as remarked in reference to the preceding period, the proof of a belief in another life.
Certain religious, or rather superstitious, ideas may have been attached to some glittering stones and bright fragments of ore which have been picked up in several settlements of these primitive tribes. M. de Vibraye found at Bourdeilles (Charente), two nodules of hydrated oxide of iron mixed with débris of all kinds; and at the settlement of Laugerie-Basse (Dordogne), in the middle of the hearth, a small mass of copper covered with a layer of green carbonate. In other spots there have been met with pieces of jet, violet fluor, &c., pierced through the middle, doubtless to enable them to be suspended to the neck and ears. The greater part of these objects may possibly be looked upon as amulets, that is, symbols of some religious beliefs entertained by man during the reindeer epoch.