Picks, hammers, and mattocks made of stag-horn.
In the caves of Périgord were also found fragments of hyaline quartz, which must have been brought from the Alps or the Pyrenees. In Brittany and in Marne flints foreign to these granite districts are numerous; and Dr. Prunières tells us that similar discoveries were made under the megalithic monuments of France, and that neither in the eroded limestone districts of Lozère, known locally as les causses, nor under the dolmens of Haute-Vienne, were found any but implements made of rock not native to the country.
Hatchets, daggers, and nuclei, or as they are characteristically called by the country people livres de beurre, from Grand-Pressigny, have been picked up in the bed of the Seine, at Limagne in Auvergne, in Brittany, at Saint Médard near Bordeaux, on the banks of the Meuse, and even as far north as the Shetland Islands. At Concise was found red coral from the Mediterranean, whilst the yellow amber of the Baltic was picked up in the Lake Dwellings of Switzerland, beneath the dolmens of Brittany, in sepulchral caves, such as those of Oyes (Marne) or Lombrives (Ariège), beneath the megalithic tomb of La Roquette, at Saint Pargoue (Hérault) beneath the dolmen of Grailhe (Gard), at Malpas, and at Baume (Ardèche).[7] These are nearly all Neolithic tombs, though some few of them may date from the beginning of the Bronze age; but the cave-men of France owned amber even earlier than this, for five fragments have been found in the Aurensan Cave near Bagnères-de-Bigorre, which was inhabited in Palæolithic times. Jadeite and nephrite[8] are met with in the Lake Dwellings of Switzerland and Bavaria, as in the caves of Liguria and Sardinia; chloromelanite[9] in France, and obsidian[10] in Lorraine, in the island of Pianosa and in the Cyclades. We have already spoken of the calaïte[11] found beneath the dolmens of Brittany, and we may add now that it has also been found in the caves of Portugal and beneath the megalithic monuments of the south of France.
Commerce developed rapidly during Neolithic times, and, as far as we can make out from traces left, its course was from the southeast to the northwest. Streams and rivers were followed by merchants as by emigrants, and at an extremely remote date the sea no longer arrested the journeys of men. At a recent meeting of the British Anthropological Institute, Miss Buckland dwelt on the resemblance in the material, shape, and ornamentation of a golden cup found in Cornwall, to other cups found at Mykenæ and at Tarquinii, and maintained that the Cornish cup must have been the work of the same artisans, and have been brought by commerce from what was then the extremity of the known world.
It is not only in Europe that we can trace the relations established between men separated by vast distances, by oceans, and by apparently impassable deserts. The shells of the Atlantic and those of the Pacific, the copper of Lake Superior, the mica of the Alleghanies, and the obsidian of Mexico lie together beneath the tumuli of Ohio, and quite recently Mr. Putnam exhibited to the Society of Antiquaries a collection of jade celts and ornaments, some from Nicaragua, others from Costa Rica, and a hatchet with both edges sharpened from Michigan. No deposit of jade has so far been discovered on the American continent, so that we can only suppose these objects to have been brought from Asia at an unknown date. The marks they retain of having been rubbed up, and the holes made in them to hang them up, show what store was set by them.
Monuments of many kinds scattered over different countries, weapons and implements, relics as they are of a remote past, enable us to gain a closer insight into the manners, customs, and mode of life of our ancestors of the Stone age. We can picture their daily life, which we know to have been one long struggle, without break or truce, for they had to contend, not only with wild animals but with each other, to fight for the use of their caves of refuge, for their hunting fields, and for their watercourses; and later, the first shepherds had to do battle for the pasturage necessary for their flocks. It is only too certain that, from the earliest dawn of humanity, men gave way, without any effort at self-control, to their brutal passions. The right of the strongest was the only law, and wherever man penetrated his course was marked by violence and by death. One of the femora of an old man was found in the celebrated Cro-Magnon Cave, bearing a deep depression caused by a blow of a projectile, and on the forehead of the woman that lay beside him is a large wound made by a small flint hatchet ([Fig. 76]). This gash on the frontal bone penetrated the skull, and was probably the cause of death, but not of sudden death, for round about the wound are marks of an attempt at healing it.[12] According to Dr. Hamy, many of the bones found in the Sordes Cave have very curious wounds. A gaping hole on the right parietal of a woman must have been a terrible wound ([Fig. 77]). The woman of Sordes, like that of Cro-Magnon, must have survived for some time; the marks of the removal of splinters of bone, which can quite easily be made out, leave no doubt on that point.[13]
Figure 76.
Cranium of a woman, from Cro-Magnon, seen full face.