Cave Hunting / Researches on the evidence of caves respecting the early inhabitants of Europe

by William Boyd Dawkins

It is by no means my intention in this work to give a history of legends such as these, but to take my readers with me into some of the more important and more beautiful caves in this country. The exploration of the chambers and passages of which they are composed, the fording of the subterranean streams by which they are frequently traversed, or the descent into deep chasms which open in their floors, have the peculiar charm of mountaineering, not without a certain pleasurable amount of risk. But to physicist and geologist they offer far more than this. They give an insight into the wonderful chemistry by which changes are being wrought, at the present time, in the solid rock. Nor are the conclusions to which we are led by the investigation of these chemical changes merely confined to the interior of caves. They enable us to understand how some of the most beautiful scenery in Europe has been formed, and to realize the mode by which all precipices and gorges have been carved out of the calcareous rock. In the next chapter we shall see why it is that the combination of hill and valley, ravine and precipice, present the same general features in all limestone districts—why, for instance, the ravines of Palestine are the same as those of Greece, and both are identical with those in Yorkshire. The origin and the history of caves will be examined, as well as their relation to the general physical geography of the calcareous strata. All these subjects are comprehended in the first or the physical division of cave-hunting.

The Biological Division.

We must now proceed to the definition of the scope and object of the second, or Biological, division of the subject.

Caves have been used by man, and the domestic animals living under his protection, from the earliest times recorded by history down to the present day. Those penetrating the rugged precipices of Palestine, we read in the Old Testament, served both for habitation and for burial, and, from the notices which are scattered through the early Greek writers, we may conclude that those of Greece were used for dwelling-places. The story of the Cyclops proves that they were also used as folds for goats. The name of Troglodytes, given to many peoples of the most remote antiquity, implies that there was a time in the history of mankind when Pliny’s statement “specus erat pro domibus” was strictly true (“Hist. Nat.” I. v. c. 56). The caves of Africa have been places of retreat from the remotest antiquity down to the French conquest of Algeria, and in 1845 several hundred Arabs were suffocated in those of Dahra by the smoke of a fire kindled at the entrance by Marshal (then Colonel) Pelissier. Dr. Livingstone alludes in his recent letters to the vast caves of Central Africa, which offer refuge to whole tribes with their cattle and household stuff. In France, according to M. Desnoyers, there are at the present time whole villages, including the church, to be found in the rock, which are merely caves modified, extended, and altered by the hand of man. The caves of the Dordogne were inhabited in the middle ages. Floras writes that the Aquitani, “callidum genus in speluncas se recipiebant, Cæsar jussit includi,”[2] and the same caves afforded shelter to the inhabitants of the same region in the wars of King Pepin against the last Duke of Aquitaine. In this country a small cave in Cheddar Pass was occupied till within the last few years. The caves in the northern counties are stated by Gildas to have offered a refuge to the Brit-Welsh inhabitants of Britain during the raids of the Picts and Scots; and in the year 1745 those of Yorkshire were turned to the same purpose during the invasion of the Pretender. We might reasonably expect to find in caves turned to these uses objects left behind, which would tell us something of the manners and customs of their possessors, and light up the catalogue of battles and intrigues of which history generally consists. The results obtained from the Brit-Welsh group of caves, treated in the [third] chapter, show that this hitherto neglected branch of the inquiry is not without value to the historian.

Caves containing remains of this kind may be conveniently termed historic, because they may be brought into relation with history. It must, however, be carefully remarked that the term does not relate to history in general, but to that in particular of each country which happens to be under investigation. The misapprehension of this has caused great confusion, and many mistakes in archæological classification and reasoning.

Again, our experience of the habits of rude and uncivilized peoples would naturally lead us to look to caves, as the places in which we should be likely to meet with the remains of the men who lived in Europe before the dawn of history. Such remains we do find that, placed side by side with others from the tombs and dwellings, enable us to discover some, at least, of the races who lived in Europe in long-forgotten times, and to ascertain roughly the sequence of events in the remote past, far away from the historical border. It may, indeed, seem a hopeless quest to recover what has been buried in oblivion so long, and it is successful merely through the careful comparison of the human skeletons in the caves and tombs of Britain, France, and Spain, with those of existing races, and of the implements and weapons with those which are now used among savage tribes. By this means we shall see that there are good grounds for extending the range of the Iberian people over a considerable area in Europe, and for the belief that the Eskimos once lived as far south as Auvergne. In discussing both these problems it will be impossible to shut our eyes to the continuity that exists between geology, archæology, biology, and history—sciences which at first sight appear isolated from each other.

The bones of the domestic animals in the caves will necessarily lead to the further examination of the appearance and disappearance of breeds under the care of man. And this complicated question has an important bearing not merely on the ethnology, but also on the history, of some of the European peoples. It must be admitted, however, that this branch of the subject is, as yet, known merely in outline, and we can only hope to ascertain a few facts which may form a basis for future investigation.

From another point of view the contents of caves are peculiarly valuable. They have been used as places of shelter, not merely by man, but by wild animals, from the time they first became accessible to the present day. In the same way, therefore, as now they contain, in their superficial layers, the bones of sheep, oxen, and horses, foxes, rabbits, and badgers, so in their deeper strata lie buried the remains of the animals which were living in Europe long before the historic times. In other words, they enable us to make out the groups of animals inhabiting the neighbouring districts, and which in many cases have either forsaken their original abodes or have become extinct. And since those which are extinct, or which have migrated, could not have lived where their remains are found under the present conditions of life, an inquiry into their history leads us into the general question of the ancient European climate and geography. It is obvious, for example, that the spotted hyæna, which formerly inhabited the caves of Sicily, could not have crossed over to that island after it was separated from Africa and Italy; and it would be impossible for the musk-sheep, the most arctic of the herbivora, to live as far south as Auvergne under the present climatal conditions. The presence, therefore, of these animals in these districts is proof in the one case of a geographical, and in the other of a climatal, change.

The discussion of all these questions is comprehended under the second, or biological, division of cave-hunting, which may be defined as an inquiry into the remains of man and animals found in the caves, and into the conditions under which they lived in Europe.