The superficial portions of the cave-earth had certainly been disturbed, and there is no evidence that the disturbance did not extend down to the horizon where the skeleton rested. Nevertheless, Mr. Pengelly concludes that the interment is of palæolithic age from its analogy with that of Cro-Magnon and Paviland, which we have seen to be of equally doubtful antiquity. It seems to me that this conclusion, which is almost universally accepted, is not warranted by the facts, and that it cannot be used in support of any speculation as to the condition of man in the pleistocene age.
The skull is described by M. Rivière as long, the thigh-bones are strongly carinate, and the tibiæ are platycnemic as in the case of those from Cro-Magnon, Gibraltar, Sclaigneaux, and North Wales.
Grotta dei Colombi in Island of Palmaria, inhabited by Cannibals.
We are indebted to Professor Capellini for an account of the exploration of the Grotta dei Colombi, a cave in a vertical cliff in the island of Palmaria,[172] overlooking to the south the Gulf of Spezzia. In the red loam, composing the floor, were numerous flakes and scrapers, a rounded “striker” of Saussurite, quartz, pebbles, fragments of pottery, a bone needle, a whistle made of the first phalange of a goat’s foot, shells perforated for suspension, Natica mille-punctata, Pectunculus glycimeris, and Patella cærulea, together with bones of goat, hog, ox, wolf, wild cat, and broken and cut human bones belonging to children and young adults.
Among the remains Professor Capellini draws attention in particular to the thigh-bones, scorched by fire, one of which bears incisions on its posterior face made by a flint implement in cutting away the flesh (Pl. 73, a), and is also marked by scraping. He considers that they belong to an ape, closely allied to the Macacus innuus of Gibraltar and North Africa, and concludes, therefore, that the animal was living in Palmaria at the time that the cave was inhabited. This identification is forbidden by the spongy texture, the rounded contour, and the absence of epiphyses that imply that the bone was very young, and that in the adult it would be far larger than any thigh-bone of the apes. On comparing his figures with eight femora belonging to young children, from the cairn at Cefn, and the caves at Perthi-Chwareu, I find that they agree in every particular with two, the flattening of the inferior extremity, considered by Prof. Calori to be a non-human character, being equally met with in all, and being relatively greater in the younger than the older. They offer, therefore, unmistakeable proof that the inhabitants of the cave were cannibals ([Fig. 73]). I am informed by my friend, Prof. Busk, that the bone figured belonged to a child about eight years old. The outline b in the figure represents the contour of one of the femora from the cavern at Cefn, described in the [fifth] chapter.
Fig. 73.—Thigh-bone of child from Grotta dei Colombi (Capellini). a, Cuts; b, Outline of corresponding thigh-bone from cavern at Cefn.
In this cave, as in those quoted above, there are no polished stone implements, or works of art, that establish that these feasts were carried on in the cave by neolithic cannibals, for the rude flint-flakes and bone articles, taken by Professor Capellini to fix its date, are common both to the palæolithic and the bronze ages. Nevertheless, since the inhabitants have left behind no trace of any metal, and since their food was wholly supplied by the existing animals, they were probably in the neolithic stage of culture, if this be taken to cover the wide interval extending from the pleistocene to the age of bronze. They are proved, by the rudeness of their implements, to have been savages of a very low order.
We may gather from various allusions, and stories scattered through the classical writers, such for example as that of the Cyclops, that the caves on the shores of the Mediterranean were inhabited by cannibals in ancient times. In the island of Palmaria we meet with unmistakeable proof that it was no mere idle tale or poetical dream. But we have no proof that cannibalism was universally practised at any stage in the history of man. All the caves of Europe, explored up to the present time, merely afford some three or four examples in the neolithic and bronze ages. In the pleistocene there is no instance which is devoid of doubt. This atrocious practice is therefore to be viewed as abnormal, and it probably became ingrafted into the religious ideas of the nations of antiquity from the horror by which it was surrounded, ultimately surviving in the form of human sacrifices to the offended gods.