Mr. Evans, in discussing the use of certain perforated plates of stone frequently found in British graves, adopts the idea that they were bracers, or guards, to protect the left arm of the archer against the recoil of the string in shooting with the bow. But, he adds, “unless there was some error in observation, plates of this kind have been occasionally found on the right arm”; and he refers to a skeleton observed by Lord Londesborough, on the opening of a chambered barrow at Driffield, the bones of the right arm of which were laid in a very singular and beautiful armlet, made of some large animal’s bone, set with two gold-headed bronze pins or rivets, most probably to attach it to a strap which passed round the arm, and was secured by a small bronze buckle found underneath the bones. This also Mr. Evans supposes to have been the bracer, or guard of an archer; and he adds, “possibly this ancient warrior was left-handed.” A Scottish example, from a large tumulus on the shore of Broadford Bay, Isle of Skye, is here shown, Fig. 39. These plates, or guards, are most frequently made of a close-grained green chlorite slate; and in various cases flint arrow-heads have been noted among other contents of the same grave. But the cist in which the supposed left-handed warrior lay contained a bronze dagger, some large amber beads, and a drinking-cup; but no arrow-heads to confirm the idea that he had been laid to rest with his bow beside him, and the guard ready braced on his arm, like one of the seven hundred left-handed Benjamites, every one of whom could sling stones at a hair’s breadth, and not miss. Possibly the novel and richly finished armlet occupied its proper place on the right arm as a personal decoration suited to the rank of the wearer.
But bronze pins and daggers carry us into later times than those of the Troglodytes of the Dordogne. Ancient though the Driffield barrow unquestionably is according to ordinary chronology, it is a very recent sepulchre compared with the catacombs of the French reindeer period, the drawings from which undoubtedly suggest the right-handedness of the draughtsmen who used the stylus and graver so dexterously in that birthtime of the fine arts in transalpine Europe.
But similar traces of primitive art, assigned to a still earlier epoch, have been recently reported from the vicinity of the Dardanelles. Mr. Frank Calvert describes the discovery of numerous stone implements, some of them of large size, and much worn, imbedded in drift two or three hundred feet thick, underlying stratified rocks, as he believes, of the miocene period. Flint implements are rare, and the most common material is red or other coloured jasper. Among fossil bones, teeth, and shells from the same formation, remains of the Dinotherium, and the shell of a species of Melania pertaining to the miocene epoch, have been identified; and Mr. Calvert writes to the Levant Herald:—“From the face of a cliff composed of strata of that period, at a geological depth of 800 feet, I have myself extracted a fragment of the joint of a bone of either a dinotherium or a mastodon, on the convex side of which is deeply incised the unmistakable figure of a horned quadruped, with arched neck, lozenge-shaped chest, long body, straight forelegs, and broad feet. There are also traces of seven or eight other figures, which, together with the hind quarters of the first, are nearly obliterated. The whole design encircles the exterior portion of the fragment, which measures nine inches in diameter, and five in thickness. I have also found, not far from the site of the engraved bone, in different parts of the same cliff, a flint flake, and some bones of animals fractured longitudinally, obviously by the hand of man, for the purpose of extracting the marrow, according to the practice of all primitive races.”[[47]]
These traces of primitive art Mr. Calvert recognises as “conclusive proofs of the existence of man during the miocene period of the tertiary age.” They at least furnish additional illustrations of his intellectual activity, however remote the antiquity to which he is traced; and show the same ideas of comparison which enter so largely, not only into modern artistic design, but into much of the rhetoric and poetry of later times.
Among living races the Innuit of Alaska, within three degrees of Behring’s Strait, are skilful carvers in ivory. They chiefly use the teeth of the Beluga, a small white whale common in their seas, and from this they carve birds, fish, seals, deer, and other animals, as well as bodkins, needles, awls, and other implements, with considerable skill. They obtain the walrus tusks in barter from more northern tribes; and from those they make fish-spears, harpoons, and other larger implements. They also amuse themselves with graving, on plates of bone or ivory, dances, hunting-scenes, and other familiar incidents. Of the latter, Mr. W. H. Dall remarks, in his interesting narrative of Alaska and its Resources: “These drawings are analogous to those discovered in France, in the caves of Dordogne.”[[48]] They are so, in so far as both are attempts at representing contemporary animal life by untutored man; but the accompanying illustrations of Innuit art show how greatly the work of the modern savage draughtsman falls short of that of the artist of the Mammoth epoch of Europe.
Fig. 40.—Hunter’s Tally Deer’s-horn.
Fortunately our knowledge of the men of that remote era is supplemented by evidence of a still more direct kind. In 1868 the construction of a railroad led to the removal of an extensive talus on the left bank of the river Vézère, at Cro-Magnon, exposing a cave, or shallow recess in the face of the rock, within which were found a succession of strata, with traces of the action of fire, and including flint scrapers, bone bodkins, arrow-points, and other implements, along with bones of the Elephas primigenius, Felis spelæa, the reindeer, fossil-horse, and ivory tablets and tynes of deer-horn, marked with a series of notches, supposed to be hunters’ tallies recording the produce of the chase. One of the latter, interesting as an illustration of these earliest efforts at numerical notation, is shown in Fig. 40. But most valuable of all were the human skeletons, including those of an old man, a woman, and portions of others of two young men, and a child. Beside them lay nearly three hundred marine shells, chiefly the Littorina littorea, some perforated teeth, and—as if to determine the era of the Troglodytes of Cro-Magnon,—several implements made of reindeer horn.
Evidence of a similar kind accumulates with the interest which it has excited. To the south of the Alps the caverns of Baoussé Roussé have yielded a singularly rich series of implements and personal ornaments of flint, ivory, bone, and shell; and more important than all, a nearly perfect human skeleton, brought to light in the Mentone Cave, with the skull still decorated with its ornamental head-gear of perforated shells (Cyclonassa neritea) and canine teeth of the Cervus elaphus, originally strung, as is supposed, on a net for the hair. Across the forehead lay a large bone hair pin, made of the radius of a stag, with the natural condyle retained as its head.[[49]] The correspondence between the Mentone skull and those of Cro-Magnon is considerable. Already, therefore, sufficient remains of the ancient cave dwellers have been recovered to enable us to form some definite idea of their physical characteristics.
