The cave called the Cat-Hole, in Gower (Glamorgan), explored by Colonel Wood in 1864, contained several human skeletons, flint flakes, fragments of red pottery marked with a string, cut bones, a stone muller, and a bronze socketed celt. The last is of the same pattern as some of those in the collection of the Rev. Canon Greenwell, from Heathery Burn, and has been cast in a mould similar in size and ornamentation to that figured in [woodcut 35].
The Caves of Césareda probably occupied by Cannibals.
The contents of three caves[91] in the Iberian peninsula, referable to the dawn of the bronze age, render it very probable that the use of human flesh was not unknown in those times.
In 1867 Senhor J. L. Delgado described his researches in the caverns of Césareda, in the valley of the Tagus, in the Casa da Maura, Lapa Furada, and Cova da Maura. The first of these contained two distinct strata. The lower, consisting of sand mixed with fragments of rock, rested on the stalagmite, and contained fragments of charcoal, one implement of bone, and many of flint, a scraper, a flake, and an arrow-head. The broken bones and teeth belonged to the following animals:—The lynx, fox, brown-bear, dog and wolf, a species of deer, the water-vole, and the rabbit. None of the remains of the carnivora had been subjected to the action of fire, or had been used for food. A human skull with lower jaw was dug out of the deepest part, but, since the matrix had been disturbed, it had probably been interred after the accumulation of the deposit.
It is recognized by Professor Busk[92] as belonging to the same long type as the skulls of the caves of Gibraltar and the Basque graveyard, measuring in length 6·7 inches, in breadth 5·3, in height 5·5, and therefore possessing cephalic and latitudinal indices of ·785 and ·820.[93]
The upper stratum, a sandy loam, contained a large quantity of stones, and numerous articles fabricated by man: polished-stone axes, flakes, and other instruments of flint, bone, and antler, fragments of coarse black pottery, with bits of calcareous spar imbedded in its substance, and two plates of schist ornamented with a rude design, which may have been used as amulets. Fragments of charcoal were scattered throughout the matrix, and adhered to some of the pottery and to the burnt pebbles. The most abundant remains were those of man. They were to be counted by thousands, and were so fragmentary and scattered that it was impossible to put together one perfect skeleton. The teeth, belonging for the most part to children or fully-grown adults, were particularly abundant. The long bones had lost, very generally, their articular ends, had been fractured longitudinally, and some of them had been cut and scraped. It is therefore probable that this accumulation was formed by a tribe of cannibals: the evidence that human flesh formed their principal food being precisely of the same nature as that by which the flint-folk of the Périgord are proved to have subsisted on the flesh of the reindeer. Professor Busk,[94] however, is inclined to believe the facts in support of cannibalism insufficient. The associated animals consisted of the bat, dormouse, rabbit, horse, a small ox, allied to Bos longifrons, sheep or goat, wild cat, wolf, fox, and dog. The contents of the other two caves were precisely of the same nature, and had been accumulated under the same conditions.
A bronze arrow-head, discovered in the upper stratum, and the ornamentation of the stone amulet, consisting of alternate triangles and zigzag ladders, as remarked by Mr. John Evans, indicate that the upper deposit belongs to the age of bronze, and probably to an early stage, when stone was being superseded by bronze, since many stone celts were found in the same spot.
The ancient burial-places of Ultz, in Westphalia, furnish a second case of the practice of cannibalism, according to M. Schaaffhausen of Bonn[95]. They are probably of the age of bronze.