Science from an Easy Chair

by Sir E. Ray Lankester

Fig. 71.—Painting of a bison in orange-brown, grey, black, and white, the outline partly engraved, from the roof of the cave of Altamira, near Santander, in the north of Spain, upon which many others as well as wild-boar, horses, and deer are depicted. The original is about two and a half feet long. These drawings were executed by the Reindeer Men in the period of the Upper or Post-Glacial Pleistocene.

Yet, on account of the nearness to our own times of the events which took place in the Pleistocene period, geologists and prehistorians have studied its details with minute care, and have accumulated an immense array of facts and specimens by digging and carefully collecting in Western and Central Europe. They have divided up this Pleistocene period and the deposits in river-valley and cave which have occurred within its limits into three great consecutive ages. These are distinguished from one another by the distinctive wild animals which flourished in each, by the climate which is indicated, and by the progressive development of the art and workmanship of the Palæolithic men discovered in successive layers of deposit. Let me here refer the reader to the tabular statement on [page 384 bis].

These ages of the Pleistocene are:—No. 1. The Upper or Post-Glacial Pleistocene, or Epoch of the Reindeer. The climate was cold and dry, like that of the Russian steppes. The contents of the celebrated cave of La Madeleine, in the Dordogne, and the upper layers of deposit in a whole series of caves (including Kent’s Cavern and the Creswell Cave in England) belong to this age. This was the period in which the caves were inhabited by the artistic race “who came no one knows whence, and went no one knows whither,” accompanied by the reindeer. Before them there was no carving in the caves, or only very rough work, and we are justified in concluding that the men who inhabited the caves before this period belonged to a totally distinct and inferior race. The “Reindeer Men” must have developed their art by gradual steps before they arrived in the caves of Western Europe—where we do not know. At the end of this period the climate became much milder, and the red deer of our own day took the place of the reindeer, during a long transition in which the “Reindeer Men” and their art disappeared, and the pastoral, land-tilling, stone-building, pottery-making communities of the Neolithic Age came into existence, showing no trace of the art of their predecessors. The mammoth and rhinoceros, bison, and aurochs, and, in fact, all the commoner animals of an earlier period were present nearly all through the Reindeer period (they disappear in the late “transition period” of the red deer, called “Azilian”), and were known to the “Reindeer Men,” but great herds of reindeer and of horses occupied the grassy lands in this age, which were not abundant previously. These herds probably were to some extent protected by the men, whilst the lion, bear, hyæna, mammoths, and rhinoceroses were diminishing in number, and were kept at a distance.

Fig. 72.—Back and front view of a flint implement of the Moustier type (period of the Neander Men or Middle Pliocene), half the size (linear) of the object. Observe the bulb of percussion at b, and the completion of one face by a single blow. Note also the fine edge and point of the weapon.

[Transcriber’s Note: The original image is approximately 2¾ inches (7cm) high and 3¼ inches (8cm) wide in total.]

The next lower division of the Pleistocene is No. 2, the Middle Pleistocene or Last Glacial Age, or better, the Epoch of the Mammoth. The climate was cold and humid. For the third and last time great glaciers existed over the whole of Northern Europe, and only bits of the south of England and the central and southern parts of France were free from the ice-covering, and carried a rich vegetation. Deeper deposits in caves are of this age, and also much of the river gravels of the lower terraces of English and French rivers. By the French it is often called the Moustierian period, because it is well seen in the rich deposits of the caves and plateau of Le Moustier, on the river Vezère (an affluent of the Dordogne), which contain bones of mammoth and rhinoceros, and flint implements of a special form ([Fig. 72]), but no carvings or artistic work. Hyænas made some of the caverns into their dens, and the cave-lion and the cave-bear were there too. The men of this period actually contested with these carnivors for the possession of the caves, and made great fires to keep out wild beasts, as well as to grill the meat on which they fed. They were of an inferior race to the Reindeer Men, and had not such command of the situation as their successors. We find their remains, their flint weapons, and in rare cases their own bones as well as the bones of the mammoth and hairy rhinoceros (on which they fed), and the bones of their competitors, the hyænas, bears, and lions, in the deeper deposits of some caves, underlying, and separated often by calcareous deposit from, the layers which belong to the subsequent and prosperous days of the Reindeer Men. Most striking is the fact that in the layers of deposit of this older age, there are no works of art nor any implements carved from bone or ivory. These earlier men, devoid of art and living at a low level of savagery, were the Neander Men. It is in this layer and under these conditions that the few broken skulls, agreeing in shape and character with that of the Neander Valley, have been found.

Lastly we come to division No. 3, the Lower Pleistocene, or Epoch of the Hippopotamus. The later climate of this age was mild. It came between two glacial periods, owing to the retreat of the glaciers, which had earlier increased in extent so as to produce the second Great Glacial period. The hippopotamus swam in the Thames and Severn in those days, and left its bones and teeth in the older gravels of those and other European rivers, where we now find them. The big almond-shaped and leaf-shaped flint implements of the English ([Fig. 73]) and French gravels ([Fig. 74]) belong to this period. We have no knowledge whatever of the men who made them.[8] The mammoth was not there, but another species of elephant (E. antiquus) and a peculiar rhinoceros (R. merckii). The deepest and oldest deposits in some caves belong to this age, as well as the high-lying gravels of St. Acheuil, of many English river-valleys, and of Chelles on the Seine. This period is not represented by much deposit in caves, though some caves contain very deep-lying layers enclosing bones or teeth of the animals characterising this period.

Older than the Age of the Hippopotamus are deposits which are reckoned by geologists as “Pliocene”—no longer Pleistocene—and are called “Tertiary,” not “Quaternary.” The forest bed of Norfolk (regarded by Professor Marcelin Boule as of transitional character, as shown in the tabular view on [p. 384 bis]), the Norwich crag, the Suffolk red and coralline crag, and very extensive sandy deposits all over Europe belong to the Pliocene. The earliest or first great extension of glaciers occurred late in this period. The animals are very different from those of the Pleistocene; the great mastodon and the tapir are there, and the sabre-toothed tiger. Implements manufactured by man are found in the oldest Pleistocene, and there is no reason to doubt that we shall find his workmanship in the Pliocene, too, though it is not admitted that this has yet been done. It is a question still eagerly studied and debated as to whether the roughly chipped flints found in gravels on high downs in the south of England, and called “eoliths,” are (as I think many of them are) the work of man, and whether the high-lying gravels in which they are found are to be regarded as of the oldest Pleistocene Age or as late Pliocene. It is an exciting and deeply interesting field of practical exploration and reasoned inference.