Principles of Geology / or, The Modern Changes of the Earth and its Inhabitants Considered as Illustrative of Geology

by Sir Charles Lyell

In several caverns on the banks of the Meuse, near Liège, Dr. Schmerling has found human bones in the same mud and breccia with those of the elephant, rhinoceros, bear, and other quadrupeds of extinct species. He has observed none of the dung of any of these animals: and from this circumstance, and the appearance of the mud and pebbles, he concludes that these caverns were never inhabited by wild beasts, but washed in by a current of water. As the human skulls and bones were in fragments, and no entire skeleton had been found, he does not believe that these caves were places of sepulture, but that the human remains were washed in at the same time as the bones of extinct quadrupeds, and that these lost species of mammalia co-existed on the earth with man.

Caverns in the south of France.—Similar associations in the south of France, of human bones and works of art, with remains of extinct quadrupeds, have induced other geologists to maintain that man was an inhabitant of that part of Europe before the rhinoceros, hyæna, tiger, and many fossil species disappeared. I may first mention the cavern of Bize, in the department of Aude, where M. Marcel de Serres met with a small number of human bones mixed with those of extinct animals and with land shells. They occur in a calcareous stony mass, bound together by a cement of stalagmite. On examining the same caverns, M. Tournal found not only in these calcareous beds, but also in a black mud which overlies a red osseous mud, several human teeth, together with broken angular fragments of a rude kind of pottery, and also recent marine and terrestrial shells. The teeth preserve their enamel; but the fangs are so much altered as to adhere strongly when applied to the tongue. Of the terrestrial shells thus associated with the bones and pottery, the most common are Cyclostoma elegans, Bulimus decollatus, Helix nemoralis, and H. nitida. Among the marine are found Pecten jacobæus, Mytilus edulis, and Natica mille-punctata, all of them eatable kinds, and which may have been brought there for food. Bones were found in the same mass belonging to three new species of deer, the brown bear (Ursus arctoïdeus), and the wild bull (Bos urus), formerly a native of Germany.[1051]

In the same parts of France, M. de Christol has found in caverns in a tertiary limestone at Pondres and Souvignargues, two leagues north of Lunel-viel, in the department of Herault, human bones and pottery confusedly mixed with remains of the rhinoceros, bear, hyæna, and other terrestrial mammifers. They were imbedded in alluvial mud, of the solidity of calcareous tufa, and containing some flint pebbles and fragments of the limestone of the country. Beneath this mixed accumulation, which sometimes attained a thickness of thirteen feet, is the original floor of the cavern, about a foot thick, covered with bones and the dung of animals (album græcum), in a sandy and tufaceous cement.

The human bones in these caverns of Pondres and Souvignargues were found, upon a careful analysis, to have parted with their animal matter to as great a degree as those of the hyæna which accompany them, and are equally brittle, and adhere as strongly to the tongue.

In order to compare the degree of alteration of these bones with those known to be of high antiquity, M. Marcel de Serres and M. Ballard, chemists of Montpelier, procured some from a Gaulish sarcophagus, in the plain of Lunel, supposed to have been buried for fourteen or fifteen centuries at least. In these the cellular tissue was empty, but they were more solid than fresh bones. They did not adhere to the tongue in the same manner as those of the caverns of Bize and Pondres, yet they had lost at least three fourths of their original animal matter.

The superior solidity of the Gaulish bones to those in a fresh skeleton is a fact in perfect accordance with the observations made by Dr. Mantell on bones taken from a Saxon tumulus near Lewes.

M. Tessier has also described a cavern near Mialet, in the department of Gard, where the remains of the bear and other animals were mingled confusedly with human bones, coarse pottery, teeth pierced for amulets, pointed fragments of bone, bracelets of bronze, and a Roman urn. Part of this deposit reached to the roof of the cavity, and adhered firmly to it. The author suggests that the exterior portion of the grotto may at one period have been a den of bears, and that afterwards the aboriginal inhabitants of the country took possession of it either for a dwelling or a burial-place, and left there the coarse pottery, amulets, and pointed pieces of bone. At a third period the Romans may have used the cavern as a place of sepulture or concealment, and to them may have belonged the urn and bracelets of metal. If we then suppose the course of the neighboring river to be impeded by some temporary cause, a flood would be occasioned, which, rushing into the open grotto, may have washed all the remains into the interior caves and tunnels, heaping the whole confusedly together.[1052]

In the controversy which has arisen on this subject, MM. Marcel de Serres, De Christol, Tournal, and others, have contended, that the phenomena of this and other caverns in the south of France prove that the fossil rhinoceros, hyæna, bear, and several other lost species, were once contemporaneous inhabitants of the country, together with man; while M. Desnoyers has supported the opposite opinion. The flint hatchets and arrow-heads, he says, and the pointed bones and coarse pottery of many French and English caves, agree precisely in character with those found in the tumuli, and under the dolmens (rude altars of unhewn stone) of the primitive inhabitants of Gaul, Britain, and Germany. The human bones, therefore, in the caves which are associated with such fabricated objects, must belong not to antediluvian periods, but to a people in the same stage of civilization as those who constructed the tumuli and altars.

In the Gaulish monuments we find, together with the objects of industry above mentioned, the bones of wild and domestic animals of species now inhabiting Europe, particularly of deer, sheep, wild-boars, dogs, horses, and oxen. This fact has been ascertained in Quercy, and other provinces; and it is supposed by antiquaries that the animals in question were placed beneath the Celtic altars in memory of sacrifices offered to the Gaulish divinity Hesus, and in the tombs to commemorate funeral repasts, and also from a supposition prevalent among savage nations, which induces them to lay up provisions for the manes of the dead in a future life. But in none of these ancient monuments have any bones been found of the elephant, rhinoceros, hyæna, tiger, and other quadrupeds, such as are found in caves, as might certainly have been expected had these species continued to flourish at the time that this part of Gaul was inhabited by man.[1053]

We are also reminded by M. Desnoyers of a passage in Florus, in which it is related that Cæsar ordered the caves into which the Aquitanian Gauls had retreated to be closed up.[1054] It is also on record, that so late as the eighth century, the Aquitanians defended themselves in caverns against King Pepin. As many of these caverns, therefore, may have served in succession as temples and habitations, as places of sepulture, concealment, or defence, it is easy to conceive that human bones, and those of animals, in osseous breccias of much older date, may have been swept away together, by inundations, and then buried in one promiscuous heap.