The skulls of the mammals bad been opened, and the bones split. Brains and marrow probably figured at feasts as the greatest delicacies. Travellers, whose tales are a help to us in building up a picture of the remote past of our race, relate that the Laplanders, as soon as an animal is killed, break open its skull and devour the brain whilst it is still warm and bleeding. This was probably also the custom amongst prehistoric cave-men.
The flesh of animals was not, alas, the only meat eaten, and excavations in different parts of the globe have led to the discovery of traces of the practice of cannibalism which it is difficult not to accept.[3]
Dr. Spring noticed at Chauvaux a great many bones which were nearly all those of women and children, side by side with which lay others of ruminants belonging to species still extant. All these bones bad alike been subjected to great heat, and none but those which bad contained no marrow were left unbroken. This appears an incontrovertible proof of cannibalism, and Dr. Spring concludes that it was certainly practised by the earliest inhabitants of Belgium. We must add, however, that other excavations in the same cave at Chauvaux prove that it was used as a burial-place, some skeletons being ranged in regular order with weapons and stone implements placed beside them.[4] M. Dupont mentions having found in the caves of the Lesse, which date from the Reindeer period, human bones mixed with other remains of a meal. He notes a similar fact in another cave that he considers belongs to Neolithic times. “But,” he adds, “none of these bones bear any trace of having been struck with a flint or other tool with a view to their fracture. If any of them are broken it is transversely, and the cause of the fracture has been merely the weight of the earth above them; moreover, they show no trace of the action of fire.”[5] M. Dupont, therefore, still retains some doubt of the cannibalism of the cave-men of the valley of the Lesse, and attributes the presence of the bones of the dead amongst the rubbish of all kinds accumulated by the living, to their idleness and indifference. One example at the present day tends to confirm this opinion, for travellers tell us of the same revolting carelessness amongst the Esquimaux, who cannot certainly be classed amongst cannibals.
The Abbé Chierici, speaking at the Brussels Congress[6] of the excavations in one of the Reggio caves, remarked that human bones were mixed with those of animals, and that both showed traces of having been burnt. These bones date from the Neolithic period, and with them were picked up various objects of remarkable workmanship, including fragments of pottery, half a grindstone for crushing grain, and some admirably polished serpentine hatchets.
Other facts leave no doubt of the cannibalism of the earliest inhabitants of Italy. Moreover, hesitation on this point is impossible for other reasons, as Roman historians allude to the practice. Pliny,[7] in saying how little removed was a human sacrifice from a meal, adds, that it ought not to surprise us to meet with this monstrous custom amongst barbarian races, as it prevailed in ancient times in Italy and Sicily.
It is generally admitted that we can tell whether the fracture of long bones was intentional by the way in which they were broken. This fact, which is true alike with the bones of men and of animals, is the most important proof we have of the cannibalism of the men of the Stone age. To the examples already given, we can easily add others culled from France. In the Pyrenees and in the caves of Lourdes and Gourdan, for instance, human bones have been found mixed with the cinders and ashes of the hearth, and still bearing the marks of the implements with which they were broken.
At Bruniquel a human skull was found which had been opened in the same way as the heads of ruminants amongst which it was picked up, and on its external surface were deep notches, which appear to have been made with a flint hatchet. Similar traces of revolting feasts on human flesh are not at all rare; near Paris, at Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, and at Varenne-Saint-Maur, for instance.[8]
The excavations in the Montesquieu-Avantès Cave, about six miles from Saint-Girons, have brought to light a hearth covered over with a layer of stalagmite; numerous fragments of human bones, crania, femora, tibiæ, humeri, and radii were found in this layer, and in that of the subjacent clay. In many cases the medullary orifice had been enlarged to make it easier to get out the marrow. It is impossible to attribute this to a rodent, for the bones gnawed by animals of that kind present a regular series of marks. The conclusion is inevitable: these bones, alike of men and of animals, were the remains of a meal.[9]
In Kent’s Hole, the celebrated cave in Devonshire, amongst many objects dating from the Stone age, were found some human bones bearing traces of having been gnawed by man. The eminent anthropologist, Owen, came to a similar conclusion—that cannibalism had been practised—after examining the jaw-bone of a child found in Scotland; and so did the Rev. F. Porter, after the excavations near Scarborough, where several skeletons were found under a tumulus, which had apparently been thrown where they were discovered by accident.
The Cesareda caves in Portugal have yielded some bones split lengthwise; and beneath the dolmen near the village of Hammer, in Denmark, human bones and those of stags have been found half gnawed, and showing only too clearly the origin of the marks upon them. Worsaae quotes similar facts at Borreby, Chantres refers to the same thing in the caves of the Caucasus, Captain Burton at Beitsahur, near Jerusalem, Wiener in the sambaquis of Brazil, even in deposits which he considers of recent origin.[10]