Donald Alexander Mackenzie
Ancient Man in Britain

FOREWORD

In his Presidential Address to the Royal Anthropological Institute this year the late Dr. Rivers put his finger upon the most urgent need for reform in the study of Man, when he appealed for "the Unity of Anthropology". No true conception of the nature and the early history of the human family can be acquired by investigations, however carefully they may be done, of one class of evidence only. The physical characters of a series of skulls can give no reliable information unless their exact provenance and relative age are known. But the interpretation of the meaning of these characters cannot be made unless we know something of the movements of the people and the distinctive peculiarities of the inhabitants of the foreign lands from which they may have come. No less important than the study of their physical structure is the cultural history of peoples. The real spirit of a population is revealed by its social and industrial achievements, and by its customs and beliefs, rather than by the shape of the heads and members of its units. The revival of the belief in the widespread diffusion of culture in early times has, as one of its many important effects, directed attention to the physical peculiarities of the mixed populations of important foci of civilization throughout the world. Such inquiries have not only enabled the student of human structure to detect racial affinities where he might otherwise have neglected to look for them, but on the other hand they have been able to give the investigator of cultural diffusion evidence of the most definite and irrefutable kind in corroboration of the reality of his inferences.

At the present time students are just awakening to the fact that no adequate idea of the anthropology of any area can be acquired unless every kind of evidence, somatic and cultural, be taken into account, and the problems of the particular locality are integrated with those worldwide movements of men and of civilization of which the people and culture of that locality form a part.

The great merit of Mr. Donald Mackenzie's book is due in the main to the fact that he has taken this wider vision of his subject and interpreted the history of early man in Britain, not simply by describing the varieties of head-form or of implements, customs and beliefs, but rather by indicating how these different categories of information can be put into their appropriate setting in the history of mankind as a whole. There is nothing of technical pedantry about Mr. Mackenzie's writing. He has made himself thoroughly familiar with the customs and beliefs of the whole world, as his remarkable series of books on mythology has revealed, and in the process of acquiring this mass of information he has not sacrificed his common sense and powers of judgment. He has been able to see clearly through this amazing jumble of confusing statements the way in which every phase of civilization in all parts of the world is closely correlated with the rest; and he has given luminous expression to this clear vision of the history of man and civilization as it affects Britain.

G. Elliot Smith.

The University of London.

PREFACE

This volume deals with the history of man in Britain from the Ice Age till the Roman period. The evidence is gleaned from the various sciences which are usually studied apart, including geology, archæology, philology, ethnology or anthropology, &c., and the writer has set himself to tell the story of Ancient Man in a manner which will interest a wider circle of readers than is usually reached by purely technical books. It has not been assumed that the representatives of Modern Man who first settled in Europe were simple-minded savages. The evidence afforded by the craftsmanship, the burial customs, and the art of the Crô-Magnon races, those contemporaries of the reindeer and the hairy mammoth in South-western France, suggests that they had been influenced by a centre of civilization in which considerable progress had already been achieved. There is absolutely no evidence that the pioneers were lacking in intelligence or foresight. If we are to judge merely by their skeletons and the shapes and sizes of their skulls, it would appear that they were, if anything, both physically and mentally superior to the average present-day inhabitants of Europe. Nor were they entirely isolated from the ancient culture area by which they had been originally influenced. As is shown, the evidence afforded by an Indian Ocean sea-shell, found in a Crô-Magnon burial cavern near Mentone, indicates that much has yet to be discovered regarding the activities of the early people.

In writing the history of Ancient Man in Britain, it has been found necessary to investigate the Continental evidence. When our early ancestors came from somewhere, they brought something with them, including habits of life and habits of thought. The story unfolded by British finds is but a part of a larger story; and if this larger story is to be reconstructed, our investigations must extend even beyond the continent of Europe. The data afforded by the "Red Man of Paviland", who was buried with Crô-Magnon rites in a Welsh cave, not only emphasize that Continental and North African cultural influences reached Britain when the ice-cap was retreating in Northern Europe, but that from its very beginnings the history of our civilization cannot be considered apart from that of the early civilization of the world as a whole. The writer, however, has not assumed in this connection that in all parts of the world man had of necessity to pass through the same series of evolutionary stages of progress, and that the beliefs, customs, crafts, arts, &c., of like character found in different parts of the world were everywhere of spontaneous generation. There were inventors and discoverers and explorers in ancient times as there are at present, and many new contrivances were passed on from people to people. The man who, for instance, first discovered how to "make fire" by friction of fire-sticks was undoubtedly a great scientist and a benefactor of his kind. It is shown that shipbuilding had a definite area of origin.

The "Red Man of Paviland" also reveals to us minds pre-occupied with the problems of life and death. It is evident that the corpse of the early explorer was smeared with red earth and decorated with charms for very definite reasons. That the people who thus interred their dead with ceremony were less intelligent than the Ancient Egyptians who adopted the custom of mummification, or the Homeric heroes who practised cremation, we have no justification for assuming.

At the very dawn of British history, which begins when the earliest representatives of Modern Man reached our native land, the influences of cultures which had origin in distant areas of human activity came drifting northward to leave an impress which does not appear to be yet wholly obliterated. We are the heirs of the Ages in a profounder sense than has hitherto been supposed.

Considered from this point of view, the orthodox scheme of Archæological Ages, which is of comparatively recent origin, leaves much to be desired. If anthropological data have insisted upon one thing more than another, it is that modes of thought, which govern action, were less affected by a change of material from which artifacts (articles made by man) were manufactured than they were by religious ideas and by new means for obtaining the necessary food supply. A profounder change was effected in the habits of early man in Britain by the introduction of the agricultural mode of life, and the beliefs, social customs, &c., connected with it, than could possibly have been effected by the introduction of edged implements of stone, bone, or metal.

As a substitute for the Archæological Ages, the writer suggests in this volume a new system, based on habits of life, which may be found useful for historical purposes. In this system the terms "Palæolithic", "Neolithic", &c., are confined to industries. "Neolithic man", "Bronze Age man", "Iron Age man", and other terms of like character may be favoured by some archæologists, but they mean little or nothing to most anatomists, who detect different racial types in a single "Age". A history of ancient man cannot ignore one set of scientists to pleasure another.

Several chapters are devoted to the religious beliefs and customs of our ancestors, and it is shown that there is available for study in this connection a mass of evidence which the archæological agnostics are too prone to ignore. The problem of the megalithic monuments must evidently be reconsidered in the light of the fuller anthropological data now available. Indeed, it would appear that a firmer basis than that afforded by "crude evolutionary ideas" must be found for British archæology as a whole. The evidence of surviving beliefs and customs, of Celtic philology and literature, of early Christian writings, and of recent discoveries in Spain, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, cannot, to say the least of it, be wholly ignored.

In dealing with the race problem, the writer has sifted the available data which throw light on its connection with the history of British culture, and has written as he has written in the hope that the growth of fuller knowledge on the subject will be accompanied by the growth of a deeper sympathy and a deeper sense of kinship than has hitherto prevailed in these islands of ours, which were colonized from time to time by groups of enterprising pioneers, who have left an enduring impress on the national character. The time is past for beginning a history of Britain with the Roman invasion, and for the too-oft-repeated assertion that before the Romans reached Britain our ancestors were isolated and half civilized.

DONALD A. MACKENZIE.

CHAPTER I
Britons of the Stone Age

Caricatures of Early Britons—Enterprising Pioneers—Diseases and Folk-cures—Ancient Surgical Operations—Expert Artisans—Organized Communities—Introduction of Agriculture—Houses and Cooking Utensils—Spinning and Weaving—Different Habits of Life—The Seafarers.

The Early Britons of the Stone Age have suffered much at the hands of modern artists, and especially the humorous artists. They are invariably depicted as rude and irresponsible savages, with semi-negroid features, who had perforce to endure our rigorous and uncertain climate clad in loosely fitting skin garments, and to go about, even in the depth of winter, barefooted and bareheaded, their long tangled locks floating in the wind.

As a rule, the artists are found to have confused ideas regarding the geological periods. Some place the white savages in the age when the wonderful megalithic monuments were erected and civilization was well advanced, while others consign them to the far-distant Cretaceous Age in association with the monstrous reptiles that browsed on tropical vegetation, being unaware, apparently, that the reptiles in question ceased to exist before the appearance of the earliest mammals. Not unfrequently the geological ages and the early stages of human culture are hopelessly mixed up, and monsters that had been extinct for several million years are shown crawling across circles that were erected by men possessed of considerable engineering skill.

It is extremely doubtful if our remote ancestors of the Stone Age were as savage or as backward as is generally supposed. They were, to begin with, the colonists who made Britain a land fit for a strenuous people to live in. We cannot deny them either courage or enterprise, nor are we justified in assuming that they were devoid of the knowledge and experience required to enable them to face the problems of existence in their new environment. They came from somewhere, and brought something with them; their modes of life did not have origin in our native land.

Although the early people lived an open-air life, it is doubtful if they were more physically fit than are the Britons of the twentieth century. They were certainly not immune from the ravages of disease. In their graves are found skeletons of babies, youths, and maidens, as well as those of elderly men and women; some spines reveal unmistakable evidence of the effects of rheumatism, and worn-down teeth are not uncommon. It is possible that the diseases associated with marshy localities and damp and cold weather were fairly prevalent, and that there were occasional pestilences with heavy death-rates. Epidemics of influenza and measles may have cleared some areas for periods of their inhabitants, the survivors taking flight, as did many Britons of the fifth century of our own era, when the country was swept by what is referred to in a Welsh book¹ as "the yellow plague", because "it made yellow and bloodless all whom it attacked". At the same time recognition must be given to the fact that the early people were not wholly ignorant of medical science. There is evidence that some quite effective "folk cures" are of great antiquity—that the "medicine-men" and sorcerers of Ancient Britain had discovered how to treat certain diseases by prescribing decoctions in which herbs and berries utilized in modern medical science were important ingredients. More direct evidence is available regarding surgical knowledge and skill. On the Continent and in England have been found skulls on which the operation known as trepanning—the removing of a circular piece of skull so as to relieve the brain from pressure or irritation—was successfully performed, as is shown by the fact that severed bones had healed during life. The accomplished primitive surgeons had used flint instruments, which were less liable than those of metal to carry infection into a wound. One cannot help expressing astonishment that such an operation should have been possible—that an ancient man who had sustained a skull injury in a battle, or by accident, should have been again restored to sanity and health. Sprains and ordinary fractures were doubtless treated with like skill and success. In some of the incantations and charms collected by folk-lorists are lines which suggest that the early medicine-men were more than mere magicians. One, for instance, dealing with the treatment of a fracture, states:

"He put marrow to marrow; he put pith to pith; he put bone to bone; he put membrane to membrane; he put tendon to tendon; he put blood to blood; he put tallow to tallow; he put flesh to flesh; he put fat to fat; he put skin to skin; he put hair to hair; he put warm to warm; he put cool to cool."

"This," comments a medical man, "is quite a wonderful statement of the aim of modern surgical 'co-aptation', and we can hardly believe such an exact form of words imaginable without a very clear comprehension of the natural necessity of correct and precise setting."²

The discovery that Stone Age man was capable of becoming a skilled surgeon is sufficient in itself to make us revise our superficial notions regarding him. A new interest is certainly imparted to our examination of his flint instruments. Apparently these served him in good stead, and it must be acknowledged that, after all, a stone tool may, for some purposes, be quite as adequate as one of metal. It certainly does not follow that the man who uses a sharper instrument than did the early Briton is necessarily endowed with a sharper intellect, or that his ability as an individual artisan is greater. The Stone Age man displayed wonderful skill in chipping flint—a most difficult operation—and he shaped and polished stone axes with so marked a degree of mathematical precision that, when laid on one side, they can be spun round on a centre of gravity. His saws were small, but are still found to be quite serviceable for the purposes they were constructed for, such as the cutting of arrow shafts and bows, and the teeth are so minute and regular that it is necessary for us to use a magnifying glass in order to appreciate the workmanship. Some flint artifacts are comparable with the products of modern opticians. The flint workers must have had wonderfully keen and accurate eyesight to have produced, for instance, little "saws" with twenty-seven teeth to the inch, found even in the north of Scotland. In Ancient Egypt these "saws" were used as sickles.

Considerable groups of the Stone Age men of Britain had achieved a remarkable degree of progress. They lived in organized communities, and had evidently codes of laws and regularized habits of life. They were not entirely dependent for their food supply on the fish they caught and the animals they slew and snared. Patches of ground were tilled, and root and cereal crops cultivated with success. Corn was ground in handmills;³ the women baked cakes of barley and wheat and rye. A rough but serviceable pottery was manufactured and used for cooking food, for storing grain, nuts, and berries, and for carrying water. Houses were constructed of wattles interwoven between wooden beams and plastered over with clay, and of turf and stones; these were no doubt thatched with heather, straw, or reeds. Only a small proportion of the inhabitants of Ancient Britain could have dwelt in caves, for the simple reason that caves were not numerous. Underground dwellings, not unlike the "dug-outs" made during the recent war, were constructed as stores for food and as winter retreats.

As flax was cultivated, there can be little doubt that comfortable under-garments were worn, if not by all, at any rate by some of the Stone Age people. Wool was also utilized, and fragments of cloth have been found on certain prehistoric sites, as well as spindle-whorls of stone, bone, and clay, wooden spindles shaped so as to serve their purpose without the aid of whorls, bone needles, and crochet or knitting-pins. Those who have assumed that the Early Britons were attired in skin garments alone, overlook the possibility that a people who could sew, spin, and weave, might also have been skilled in knitting, and that the jersey and jumper may have a respectable antiquity. The art of knitting is closely related to that of basket-making, and some would have it that many of the earliest potters plastered their clay inside baskets of reeds, and that the decorations of the early pots were suggested by the markings impressed by these. It is of interest to note in this connection that some Roman wares were called bascaudæ, or "baskets", and that the Welsh basged—basg, from which our word "basket" is derived, signify "network" and "plaiting". The decoration of some pots certainly suggests the imitation of wickerwork and knitting, but there are symbols also, and these had, no doubt, a religious significance.

It does not follow, of course, that all the Early Britons of the so-called Stone Age were in the same stage of civilization, or that they all pursued the same modes of life. There were then, as there are now, backward as well as progressive communities and individuals, and there were likewise representatives of different races—tall and short, spare and stout, dark and fair men and women, who had migrated at different periods from different areas of origin and characterization. Some peoples clung to the sea-shore, and lived mainly on deep-sea fish and shell-fish; others were forest and moorland hunters, who never ventured to sea or cultivated the soil. There is no evidence to indicate that conflicts took place between different communities. It may be that in the winter season the hunters occasionally raided the houses and barns of the agriculturists. The fact, however, that weapons were not common during the Stone Age cannot be overlooked in this connection. The military profession had not come into existence.

Certain questions, however, arise in connection with even the most backward of the Stone Age peoples. How did they reach Britain, and what attracted them from the Continent? Man did not take to the sea except under dire necessity, and it is certain that large numbers could not possibly have crossed the English Channel on logs of wood. The boatbuilder's craft and the science of navigation must have advanced considerably before large migrations across the sea could have taken place. When the agricultural mode of life was introduced, the early people obtained the seeds of wheat and barley, and, as these cultivated grasses do not grow wild in Britain, they must have been introduced either by traders or settlers.

It is quite evident that the term "Stone Age" is inadequate in so far as it applies to the habits of life pursued by the early inhabitants of our native land. Nor is it even sufficient in dealing with artifacts, for some people made more use of horn and bone than of stone, and these were represented among the early settlers in Britain.

CHAPTER II
Earliest Traces of Modern Man

The Culture Ages—Ancient Races—The Neanderthals—Crô-Magnon Man—The Evolution Theory—Palæolithic Ages—The Transition Period—Neanderthal Artifacts—Birth of Crô-Magnon Art—Occupations of Flint-yielding Stations—Ravages of Disease—Duration of Glacial and Inter-glacial Periods.

In 1865, Sir John Lubbock (afterwards Lord Avebury), writing in the Prehistoric Times, suggested that the Stone Age artifacts found in Western Europe should be classified into two main periods, to which he applied the terms Palæolithic (Old Stone) and Neolithic (New Stone). The foundations of the classification had previously been laid by the French antiquaries M. Boucher de Perthes and Edouard Lartet. It was intended that Palæolithic should refer to rough stone implements, and Neolithic to those of the period when certain artifacts were polished.

At the time very little was known regarding the early peoples who had pursued the flint-chipping and polishing industries, and the science of geology was in its infancy. A great controversy, which continued for many years, was being waged in scientific circles regarding the remains of a savage primitive people that had been brought to light. Of these the most notable were a woman's skull found in 1848 in a quarry at Gibraltar, the Cannstadt skull, found in 1700, which had long been lying in Stuttgart Museum undescribed and unstudied, and portions of a male skeleton taken from a limestone cave in Neanderthal, near Dusseldorf, in 1857. Some refused to believe that these, and other similar remains subsequently discovered, were human at all; others declared that the skulls were those of idiots or that they had been distorted by disease. Professor Huxley contended that evidence had been forthcoming to prove the existence in remote times of a primitive race from which modern man had evolved.

It is unnecessary here to review the prolonged controversy. One of its excellent results was the stimulation of research work. A number of important finds have been made during the present century, which have thrown a flood of light on the problem. In 1908 a skeleton was discovered in a grotto near La Chapelle-aux-Saints in France, which definitely established the fact that during the earlier or lower period of the Palæolithic Age a Neanderthal race existed on the Continent, and, as other remains testify, in England as well. This race became extinct. Some hold that there are no living descendants of Neanderthal man on our globe; others contend that some peoples, or individuals, reveal Neanderthaloid traits. The natives of Australia display certain characteristics of the extinct species, but they are more closely related to Modern Man (Homo sapiens). There were pre-Neanderthal peoples, including Piltdown man and Heidelberg man.

During the Palæolithic Age the ancestors of modern man appeared in Western Europe. These are now known as the Crô-Magnon races.

In dealing with the Palæolithic Age, therefore, it has to be borne in mind that the artifacts classified by the archæologists represent the activities, not only of different races, but of representatives of different species of humanity. Neanderthal man, who differed greatly from Modern man, is described as follows by Professor Elliot Smith:

"His short, thick-set, and coarsely built body was carried in a half-stooping slouch upon short, powerful, and half-flexed legs of peculiarly ungraceful form. His thick neck sloped forward from the broad shoulders to support the massive flattened head, which protruded forward, so as to form an unbroken curve of neck and back, in place of the alteration of curves, which is one of the graces of the truly erect Homo sapiens. The heavy overhanging eyebrow ridges, and retreating forehead, the great coarse face, with its large eye-sockets, broad nose, and receding chin, combined to complete the picture of unattractiveness, which it is more probable than not was still further emphasized by a shaggy covering of hair over most of the body. The arms were relatively short, and the exceptionally large hands lacked the delicacy and the nicely balanced co-operation of thumb and fingers, which is regarded as one of the most distinctive of human characteristics."⁴

As Professor Osborn says: "the structure of the hand is a matter of the highest interest in connection with the implement-making powers of the Neanderthals". He notes that in the large and robust Neanderthal hand, "the joint of the metacarpal bone which supports the thumb is of peculiar form, convex, and presenting a veritable convex condyle, whereas in the existing human races the articular surface of the upper part of the thumb joint is saddle-shaped, that is concave from within backward, and convex from without inward". The Neanderthal fingers were "relatively short and robust".⁵

The Crô-Magnons present a sharp contrast to the Neanderthals. In all essential features they were of modern type. They would, dressed in modern attire, pass through the streets of a modern city without particular notice being taken of them. One branch of the Crô-Magnons was particularly tall and handsome, with an average height for the males of 6 feet 1-1/2 inches, with chests very broad in the upper part, and remarkably long shin-bones that indicate swiftness of foot. The Neanderthals had short shins and bent knees, and their gait must have been slow and awkward. The Crô-Magnon hand was quite like that of the most civilized men of to-day.

It is of importance to bring out these facts in connection with the study of the development of early civilization in our native land, because of the prevalence of the theory that in collections of stone implements, dating from remote Palæolithic times till the Neolithic Age, a complete and orderly series of evolutionary stages can be traced. "As like needs", says one writer in this connection, "produce like means of satisfaction, the contrivances with which men in similar stages of progress overcome natural obstacles are in all times very much the same."⁶ Hugh Miller, the Cromarty stonemason and geologist, was one of the first to urge this view. In 1835, he wrote in his Scenes and Legends, (1st edition, pp. 31, 32):

"Man in a savage stage is the same animal everywhere, and his constructive powers, whether employed in the formation of a legendary story or of a battleaxe, seem to expatiate almost everywhere in the same rugged track of invention. For even the traditions of this first stage may be identified, like its weapons of war, all the world over."⁷

He had written in this vein after seeing the collection of stone weapons and implements in the Northern Institution at Inverness. "The most practised eye", he commented, "can hardly distinguish between the weapons of the Old Scot and the New Zealander." Eyes have become more practised in dealing with flints since Miller's time. Andrew Lang remembered his Miller when he wrote:

"Now just as the flint arrowheads are scattered everywhere, in all the continents and isles—and everywhere are much alike, and bear no very definite marks of the special influence of race—so it is with the habits and legends investigated by the student of folk-lore".⁸

The recent discovery that the early flints found in Western Europe and in England were shaped by the Neanderthals and the pre-Neanderthals compels a revision of this complacent view of an extraordinarily difficult and complex problem. It is obvious that the needs and constructive powers of the Neanderthals, whose big clumsy hands lacked "the delicate play between the thumb and fingers characteristic of modern races", could not have been the same as those of the Crô-Magnons, and that the finely shaped implements of the Crô-Magnons could not have been evolved from the rough implements of the Neanderthals. The craftsmen of one race may, however, have imitated, or attempted to imitate, the technique of those of another.

There was a distinct break in the continuity of culture during the Palæolithic Age, caused by the arrival in Western Europe of the ancestors of Modern Man. The advent of the Crô-Magnons in Europe "represents on the cultural side", as Professor Elliot Smith says in Primitive Man, "the most momentous event in its history".

Photo. Mansell

EXAMPLES OF LOWER PALÆOLITHIC INDUSTRIES FOUND IN ENGLAND

(British Museum)

Some urge that the term "Palæolithic" should now be discarded altogether, but its use has become so firmly established that archæologists are loth to dispense with it. The first period of human culture has, however, had to be divided into "Lower" and "Upper Palæolithic"—Lower closing with the disappearance of the Neanderthals, and Upper beginning with the arrival of the Crô-Magnons. These periods embrace the sub-divisions detected during the latter half of last century by the French archæologists, and are now classified as follows:

Lower Palæolithic—

1. Pre-Chellean.

2. Chellean (named after the town of Chelles, east of Paris).

3. Acheulian (named after St. Acheul in Somme valley).

4. Mousterian (named after the caves of Le Moustier in the valley of the River Vézère).

Upper Palæolithic—

1. Aurignacian (named after Aurignac, Haute Garonne).

2. Solutrean (named after Solutré, Saône-et-Loire).

3. Magdalenian (named after La Madeleine in the valley of the River Vézère).

Then follows, in France, the Azilian stage (named after Mas d'Azil, a town at the foot of the Pyrenees) which is regarded as the link between Upper Palæolithic and Neolithic. But in Western Europe, including Britain, there were really three distinct cultures during the so-called "Transition Period". These are the Azilian, the Tardenoisian, and the Maglemosian. These cultures were associated with the movements of new peoples in Europe.

The pre-Chellean flints (also called Eoliths) were wrought by the pre-Neanderthals. Chellean probably represents the earliest work in Europe of a pre-Neanderthal type like Piltdown man. The most characteristic implement of this phase is the coup de poing or pear-shaped "hand axe", which was at first roughly shaped and unsymmetrical. It was greatly improved during the Acheulian stage, and after being finely wrought in Mousterian times, when it was not much used, was supplanted by smaller and better chipped implements. The Neanderthals practised the Mousterian industry.

Chellean Coup de Poing or "Hand Axe"

Right-hand view shows sinuous cutting edge.

A profound change occurred when the Aurignacian stage of culture was inaugurated by the intruding Crô-Magnons. Skilled workers chipped flint in a new way, and, like the contemporary inhabitants of North Africa, shaped artifacts from bone; they also used reindeer horn, and the ivory tusks of mammoths. The birth of pictorial art took place in Europe after the Crô-Magnons arrived.

It would appear that the remnants of the Neanderthals in the late Mousterian stage of culture were stimulated by the arrival of the Crô-Magnons to imitate new flint forms and adopt the new methods of workmanship. There is no other evidence to indicate that the Crô-Magnons came into contact with communities of the Neanderthals. In these far-off days Europe was thinly peopled by hunters who dwelt in caves. The climate was cold, and the hairy mammoth and the reindeer browsed in the lowlands of France and Germany. Italy was linked with Africa; the grass-lands of North Africa stretched southward across the area now known as the Sahara desert, and dense forests fringed the banks of the River Nile and extended eastward to the Red Sea.

Neanderthal man had originally entered Europe when the climate was much milder than it is in our own time. He crossed over from Africa by the Italian land-bridge, and he found African fauna, including species of the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, lion, and the hyæna, jackal, and sabre-tooth tiger in Spain, France, Germany. Thousands of years elapsed and the summers became shorter, and the winters longer and more severe, until the northern fauna began to migrate southward, and the African fauna deserted the plains and decaying forests of Europe. Then followed the Fourth Glacial phase, and when it was passing away the Neanderthals, who had long been in the Mousterian phase of culture, saw bands of Crô-Magnons prospecting and hunting in southern Europe. The new-comers had migrated from some centre of culture in North Africa, and appear to have crossed over the Italian land-bridge. It is unlikely that many, if any, entered Europe from the east. At the time the Black Sea was more than twice its present size, and glaciers still blocked the passes of Asia Minor.

A great contrast was presented by the two types of mankind. The short, powerfully built, but slouching and slow-footed Neanderthals were, in a conflict, no match for the tall, active, and swift-footed Crô-Magnons, before whom they retreated, yielding up their flint-working stations, and their caves and grottoes. It may be, as some suggest, that fierce battles were fought, but there is no evidence of warfare; it may be that the Neanderthals succumbed to imported diseases, as did so many thousands of the inhabitants of the Amazon Valley, when measles and other diseases were introduced by the Spaniards. The fact remains that the Neanderthals died out as completely as did the Tasmanians before the advance of British settlers. We do not know whether or not they resisted, for a time, the intrusion of strangers on their hunting-grounds. It may be that the ravages of disease completed the tragic history of such relations as they may have had with the ancestors of Modern Man.

At this point, before we deal with the arrival in Britain of the representatives of the early races, it should be noted that differences of opinion exist among scientists regarding the geological horizons of the Palæolithic culture stages. In the Pleistocene Age there appear to have been four great glacial epochs and two minor ones. Geological opinion is, however, divided in this connection.

WESTERN EUROPE DURING THE THIRD INTER-GLACIAL EPOCH

(According to the Abbé Breuil the Strait of Gibraltar was open and the Balearic group a great island.)

During the First Glacial epoch the musk-ox, now found in the Arctic regions, migrated as far south as Sussex. The Pliocene⁹ mammals were not, however, completely exterminated; many of them survived until the First Interglacial epoch, which lasted for about 75,000 years—that is three times longer than the First Glacial epoch. The Second Glacial epoch is believed to have extended over 25,000 years. It brought to the southern shores of the Baltic Sea the reindeer and the hairy mammoth. Then came the prolonged Second Interglacial stage which prevailed for about 200,000 years. The climate of Europe underwent a change until it grew warmer than it is at the present day, and trees, not now found farther north than the Canary Islands, flourished in the forests of southern France. The Third Glacial stage gradually came on, grew in intensity, and then declined during a period estimated at about 25,000 years. It was followed by the Third Interglacial epoch which may have extended over at least 100,000 years. African animals returned to Europe and mingled with those that wandered from Asia and the survivors in Europe of the Second Interglacial fauna. The Fourth Glacial epoch, which is believed to have lasted for about 25,000 years, was very severe. All the African or Asiatic mammals either migrated or became extinct with the exception of lions and hyænas, and the reindeer found the western plains of Europe as congenial as it does the northern plains at the present time.

During the Fourth Post-glacial epoch there were for a period of about 25,000 years¹⁰ partial glaciations and milder intervals, until during the Neolithic Age of the archæologists the climate of Europe reached the phase that at present prevails.

When, then, did man first appear in Europe? According to some geologists, and especially Penck and James Geikie, the Chellean phase of culture originated in the Second Interglacial epoch and the Mousterian endured until the Third Interglacial stage, when the Neanderthals witnessed the arrival of the Crô-Magnon peoples. Boule, Breuil, and others, however, place the pre-Chellean, Chellean, Acheulian, and early Mousterian stages of Lower (or Early) Palæolithic culture in the Third Interglacial epoch, and fix the extermination of Neanderthal man, in his late Mousterian culture stage, at the close of the Fourth Glacial epoch. This view is now being generally accepted. It finds favour with the archæologists, and seems to accord with the evidence they have accumulated. The Upper Palæolithic culture of Crô-Magnon man, according to some, began in its Aurignacian phase about 25,000 years ago; others consider, however, that it began about five or six thousand years ago, and was contemporaneous with the long pre-Dynastic civilization of Egypt. At the time England was connected with the Continent by a land-bridge, and as the climate grew milder the ancestors of modern man could walk across from France to the white cliffs of Dover which were then part of a low range of mountains. As will be shown, there is evidence that the last land movement in Britain did not begin until about 3000 b.c.

CHAPTER III
The Age of the "Red Man" of Wales

An Ancient Welshman—Aurignacian Culture in Britain—Coloured Bones and Luck Charms—The Cave of Aurignac—Discovery at Crô-Magnon Village—An Ancient Tragedy—Significant Burial Customs—Crô-Magnon Characters—New Race Types in Central Europe—Galley Hill Man—The Piltdown Skull—Ancient Religious Beliefs—Life Principle in Blood—Why Body-painting was practised—"Sleepers" in Caves—Red Symbolism in different Countries—The Heart as the Seat of Life—The Green Stone Talisman—"Soul Substance".

The earliest discovery of a representative of the Crô-Magnons was made in 1823, when Dr. Buckland explored the ancient cave-dwelling of Paviland in the vicinity of Rhossilly, Gower Peninsula, South Wales. This cave, known as "Goat's Hole", is situated between 30 and 40 feet above the present sea-level, on the face of a steep sandstone cliff about 100 feet in height; it is 60 feet in length and 200 feet broad, while the roof attains an altitude of over 25 feet. When this commodious natural shelter was occupied by our remote ancestors the land was on a much lower level than it is now, and it could be easily reached from the sea-shore. Professor Sollas has shown that the Paviland cave-dwellers were in the Aurignacian stage of culture, and that they had affinities with the tall Crô-Magnon peoples on the Continent.¹¹

A human skeleton of a tall man was found in the cave deposit in association with the skull and tusks of a hairy mammoth, and with implements of Aurignacian type. Apparently the Aurignacian colonists had walked over the land-bridge connecting England with France many centuries before the land sank and the Channel tides began to carve out the white cliffs of Dover.

In his description of the bones of the ancient caveman, who has been wrongly referred to as the "Red Lady of Paviland", Dr. Buckland wrote:

"They were all of them stained superficially with a dark brick-red colour, and enveloped by a coating of a kind of ruddle, composed of red micaceous oxide of iron, which stained the earth, and in some parts extended itself to the distance of about half an inch around the surface of the bones. The body must have been entirely surrounded or covered over at the time of its interment with this red substance."

Near the thighs were about two handfuls of small shells (Nerita litoralis) which had evidently formed a waist girdle. Over forty little rods of ivory, which may have once formed a long necklace, lay near the ribs. A few ivory rings and a tongue-shaped implement or ornament lay beside the body, as well as an instrument or charm made of the metacarpal bone of a wolf.

The next great discovery of this kind was made twenty-nine years later. In 1852 a French workman was trying to catch a wild rabbit on a lower slope of the Pyrenees, near the town of Aurignac in Haute Garonne, when he made a surprising find. From the rabbit's burrow he drew out a large human bone. A slab of stone was subsequently removed, and a grotto or cave shelter revealed. In the debris were found portions of seventeen skeletons of human beings of different ages and both sexes. Only two skulls were intact.

Upper Palæolithic Implements

1, Aurignacian (Chatelperron point). 2, 3, Aurignacian (keeled scrapers). 4, Aurignacian point. 5, Magdalenian ("parrot-beak" graving tool). 6, Solutrean (laurel-leaf point). 7, 8, 9, Solutrean (drill, awl, and "shouldered" point). 10, 11, 12, Magdalenian.

This discovery created a stir in the town of Aurignac, and there was much speculation regarding the tragedy that was supposed to have taken place at some distant date. A few folks were prepared to supply circumstantial details by connecting the discovery with vague local traditions. No one dreamt that the burial-place dated back a few thousand years, or, indeed, that the grotto had really been a burial-place, and the mayor of the town gave instructions that the bones should be interred in the parish cemetery.

Eight years elapsed before the grotto was visited by M. Louis Lartet, the great French archæologist. Outside the stone slab he found the remains of an ancient hearth, and a stone implement which had been used for chipping flints. In the outer debris were discovered, too, the bones of animals of the chase, and about a hundred flint artifacts, including knives, projectiles, and sling-stones, besides bone arrows, tools shaped from reindeer horns, and an implement like a bodkin of roe-deer horn. It transpired that the broken bones of animals included those of the cave-lion, the cave-bear, the hyæna, the elk, the mammoth, and the woolly-haired rhinoceros—all of which had been extinct in that part of the world for thousands of years.

As in the Paviland cave, there were indications that the dead had been interred with ornaments or charms on their bodies. Inside the grotto were found "eighteen small round and flat plates of a white shelly substance, made of some species of cockle (Cardium) pierced through the middle, as if for being strung into a bracelet". Perforated teeth of wild animals had evidently been used for a like purpose.

The distinct industry revealed by the grotto finds has been named Aurignacian, after Aurignac. Had the human bones not been removed, the scientists would have definitely ascertained what particular race of ancient men they represented.

It was not until the spring of 1868 that a flood of light was thrown on the Aurignacian racial problem. A gang of workmen were engaged in the construction of a railway embankment in the vicinity of the village of Crô-Magnon, near Les Eyzies, in the valley of the River Vézère, when they laid bare another grotto. Intimation was at once made to the authorities, and the Minister of Public Instruction caused an investigation to be made under the direction of M. Louis Lartet. The remains of five human skeletons were found. At the back of the grotto was the skull of an old man—now known as "the old man of Crô-Magnon"—and its antiquity was at once emphasized by the fact that some parts of it were coated by stalagmite caused by a calcareous drip from the roof of rock. Near "the old man" was found the skeleton of a woman. Her forehead bore signs of a deep wound that had been made by a cutting instrument. As the inner edge of the bone had partly healed, it was apparent she had survived her injury for a few weeks. Beside her lay the skeleton of a baby which had been prematurely born. The skeletons of two young men were found not far from those of the others. Apparently a tragic happening had occurred in ancient days in the vicinity of the Crô-Magnon grotto. The victims had been interred with ceremony, and in accordance with the religious rites prevailing at the time. Above three hundred pierced marine shells, chiefly of the periwinkle species (Littorina littorea), which are common on the Atlantic coasts, and a few shells of Purpura lapillus (a purple-yielding shell), Turitella communis, &c., were discovered besides the skeletons. These, it would appear, had been strung to form necklaces and other ornamental charms. M. Lartet found, too, a flat ivory pendant pierced with two holes, and was given two other pendants picked up by young people. Near the skeletons were several perforated teeth, a split block of gneiss with a smooth surface, the worked antlers of a reindeer that may have been used as a pick for excavating flint, and a few chipped flints. Other artifacts of Aurignacian type were unearthed in the debris associated with the grotto, which appears to have been used as a dwelling-place before the interments had taken place.

Skull of a Crô-Magnon Man: front and side views

From the Grotte des Enfants, Mentone. (After Verneau.)

The human remains of the Crô-Magnon grotto were those of a tall and handsome race of which the "Red Man" of Paviland was a representative. Other finds have shown that this race was widely distributed in Europe. The stature of the men varied from 5 feet 10-1/2 inches to 6 feet 4-1/2 inches on the Riviera, that of the women being slightly less. That the Crô-Magnons were people of high intelligence is suggested by the fact that the skulls of the men and women were large, and remarkably well developed in the frontal region. According to a prominent anatomist the Crô-Magnon women had bigger brains than has the average male European of to-day. All these ancient skulls are of the dolichocephalic (long-headed) type. The faces, however, were comparatively broad, and shorter than those of the modern fair North-Europeans, while the cheek-bones were high—a characteristic, by the way, of so many modern Scottish faces.

This type of head—known as the "disharmonic", because a broad face is usually a characteristic of a broad skull, and a long face of a long skull—has been found to be fairly common among the modern inhabitants of the Dordogne valley. These French descendants of the Crô-Magnons are, however, short and "stocky", and most of them have dark hair and eyes. Crô-Magnon types have likewise been identified among the Berbers of North Africa, and the extinct fair-haired Guanches of the Canary Islands, in Brittany, on the islands of northern Holland, and in the British Isles.¹²

A comparatively short race, sometimes referred to as the "Combe-Capelle", after the rock-shelter at Combe-Capelle, near Montferrand, Perigord, was also active during the stage of Aurignacian culture. An adult skeleton found in this shelter was that of a man only 5 feet 3 inches in height. The skull is long and narrow, with a lofty forehead, and the chin small and well developed. It has some similarity to modern European skulls. The skeleton had been subjected for thousands of years to the dripping of water saturated with lime, and had consequently been well preserved. Near the head and neck lay a large number of perforated marine shells (Littorina and Nassa). A collection of finely-worked flints of early Aurignacian type also lay beside the body.

Reference may also be made here to the finds in Moravia. Fragmentary skull caps from Brüx and Brünn are regarded as evidence of a race which differed from the tall Crô-Magnons, and had closer affinities with Combe-Capelle man. Some incline to connect the Brünn type with England, the link being provided by a skeleton called the "Galley Hill" after the place of its discovery below Gravesend and near Northfleet in Kent. Scientists regard him as a contemporary of the Aurignacian flint-workers of Combe-Capelle and Brünn. "Both the Brüx and Brünn skulls", writes Professor Osborn, "are harmonic; they do not present the very broad, high cheek-bones characteristic of the Crô-Magnon race,¹³ the face being of a narrow modern type, but not very long. There is a possibility that the Brünn race was ancestral to several later dolichocephalic groups which are found in the region of the Danube and of middle and southern Germany."¹⁴

The Galley Hill man had been buried in the gravels of the "high terrace", 90 feet above the Thames. His bones when found were much decayed and denuded, and the skull contorted. The somewhat worn "wisdom tooth" indicates that he was a "fully-grown adult, though probably not an aged individual". Those who think he was not as old as the flints and the bones of extinct animals found in the gravels, regard him as a pioneer of the Brünn branch of the Aurignacians.

The Piltdown skull appears to date back to a period vastly more ancient than Neanderthal times.

Our special interest in the story of early man in Britain is with the "Red Man" of Paviland and Galley Hill man, because these were representatives of the species to which we ourselves belong. The Neanderthals and pre-Neanderthals, who have left their Eoliths and Palæoliths in our gravels, vanished like the glaciers and the icebergs, and have left, as has been indicated, no descendants in our midst. Our history begins with the arrival of the Crô-Magnon races, who were followed in time by other peoples to whom Europe offered attractions during the period of the great thaw, when the ice-cap was shrinking towards the north, and the flooded rivers were forming the beds on which they now flow.

We have little to learn from Galley Hill man. His geological horizon is uncertain, but the balance of the available evidence tends to show he was a pioneer of the medium-sized hunters who entered Europe from the east, during the Aurignacian stage of culture. It is otherwise with the "Red Man" of Wales. We know definitely what particular family he belonged to; he was a representative of the tall variety of Crô-Magnons. We know too that those who loved him, and laid his lifeless body in the Paviland Cave, had introduced into Europe the germs of a culture that had been radiated from some centre, probably in the ancient forest land to the east of the Nile, along the North African coast at a time when it jutted far out into the Mediterranean and the Sahara was a grassy plain.

The Crô-Magnons were no mere savages who lived the life of animals and concerned themselves merely with their material needs. They appear to have been a people of active, inventive, and inquiring minds, with a social organization and a body of definite beliefs, which found expression in their art and in their burial customs. The "Red Man" was so called by the archæologists because his bones and the earth beside them were stained, as has been noted, by "red micaceous oxide of iron". Here we meet with an ancient custom of high significance. It was not the case, as some have suggested, that the skeleton was coloured after the flesh had decayed. There was no indication when the human remains were discovered that the grave had been disturbed after the corpse was laid in it. The fact that the earth as well as the bones retained the coloration affords clear proof that the corpse had been smeared over with red earth which, after the flesh had decayed, fell on the skeleton and the earth and gravel beside it. But why, it will be asked, was the corpse so treated? Did the Crô-Magnons paint their bodies during life, as do the Australians, the Red Indians, and others, to provide "a substitute for clothing"? That cannot be the reason. They could not have concerned themselves about a "substitute" for something they did not possess. In France, the Crô-Magnons have left pictorial records of their activities and interests in their caves and other shelters. Bas reliefs on boulders within a shelter at Laussel show that they did not wear clothing during the Aurignacian epoch which continued for many long centuries. We know too that the Australians and Indians painted their bodies for religious and magical purposes—to protect themselves in battle or enable them to perform their mysteries—rain-getting, food-getting, and other ceremonies. The ancient Egyptians painted their gods to "make them healthy". Prolonged good health was immortality.

The evidence afforded by the Paviland and other Crô-Magnon burials indicates that the red colour was freshly applied before the dead was laid in the sepulchre. No doubt it was intended to serve a definite purpose, that it was an expression of a system of beliefs regarding life and the hereafter.

Apparently among the Crô-Magnons the belief was already prevalent that the "blood is the life". The loss of life appeared to them to be due to the loss of the red vitalizing fluid which flowed in the veins. Strong men who received wounds in conflict with their fellows, or with wild animals, were seen to faint and die in consequence of profuse bleeding; and those who were stricken with sickness grew ashen pale because, as it seemed, the supply of blood was insufficient, a condition they may have accounted for, as did the Babylonians of a later period, by conceiving that demons entered the body and devoured the flesh and blood. It is not too much to suppose that they feared death, and that like other Pagan religions of antiquity theirs was deeply concerned with the problem of how to restore and prolong life. Their medicine-men appear to have arrived at the conclusion that the active principle in blood was the substance that coloured it, and they identified this substance with red earth. If cheeks grew pale in sickness, the flush of health seemed to be restored by the application of a red face paint. The patient did not invariably regain strength, but when he did, the recovery was in all likelihood attributed to the influence of the blood substitute. Rest and slumber were required, as experience showed, to work the cure. When death took place, it seemed to be a deeper and more prolonged slumber, and the whole body was smeared over with the vitalizing blood substitute so that, when the spell of weakness had passed away, the sleeper might awaken, and come forth again with renewed strength from the cave-house in which he had been laid.

The many persistent legends about famous "sleepers" that survive till our own day appear to have originally been connected with a belief in the return of the dead, the antiquity of which we are not justified in limiting, especially when it is found that the beliefs connected with body paint and shell ornaments and amulets were introduced into Europe in early post-glacial times. Ancient folk heroes might be forgotten, but from Age to Age there arose new heroes to take their places; the habit of placing them among the sleepers remained. Charlemagne, Frederick of Barbarossa, William Tell, King Arthur, the Fians, and the Irish Brian Boroimhe, are famous sleepers. French peasants long believed that the sleeping Napoleon would one day return to protect their native land from invaders, and during the Russo-Japanese war it was whispered in Russia that General Skobeleff would suddenly awake and hasten to Manchuria to lead their troops to victory. For many generations the Scots were convinced that James IV, who fell at Flodden, was a "sleeper". His place was taken in time by Thomas the Rhymer, who slept in a cave and occasionally awoke to visit markets so that he might purchase horses for the great war which was to redden Tweed and Clyde with blood. Even in our own day there were those who refused to believe that General Gordon, Sir Hector MacDonald, and Lord Kitchener, were really dead. The haunting belief in sleeping heroes dies hard.

Among the famous groups of sleeping heroes are the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus—the Christians who had been condemned to death by the Emperor Decius and concealed themselves in a cave where they slept for three and a half centuries. An eighteenth century legend tells of seven men in Roman attire, who lay in a cave in Western Germany. In Norse Mythology, the seven sons of Mimer sleep in the Underworld awaiting the blast of the horn, which will be blown at Ragnarok when the gods and demons will wage the last battle. The sleepers of Arabia once awoke to foretell the coming of Mahomet, and their sleeping dog, according to Moslem beliefs, is one of the ten animals that will enter Paradise.

A representative Scottish legend regarding the sleepers is located at the Cave of Craigiehowe in the Black Isle, Ross-shire, a few miles distant from the Rosemarkie cave. It is told that a shepherd once entered the cave and saw the sleepers and their dog. A horn, or as some say, a whistle, hung suspended from the roof. The shepherd blew it once and the sleepers shook themselves; he blew a second time, and they opened their eyes and raised themselves on their elbows. Terrified by the forbidding aspect of the mighty men, the shepherd refrained from blowing a third time, but turned and fled. As he left the cave he heard one of the heroes call after him: "Alas! you have left us worse than you found us." As whistles are sometimes found in Magdalenian shelters in Western and Central Europe, it may be that these were at an early period connected with the beliefs about the calling back of the Crô-Magnon dead. The ancient whistles were made of hare—and reindeer-foot bone. The clay whistle dates from the introduction of the Neolithic industry in Hungary.

The remarkable tendency on the part of mankind to cling to and perpetuate ancient beliefs and customs, and especially those connected with sickness and death, is forcibly illustrated by the custom of smearing the bodies of the living and dead with red ochre. In every part of the world red is regarded as a particularly "lucky colour", which protects houses and human beings, and imparts vitality to those who use it. The belief in the protective value of red berries is perpetuated in our own Christmas customs when houses are decorated with holly, and by those dwellers in remote parts who still tie rowan berries to their cows' tails so as to prevent witches and fairies from interfering with the milk supply. Egyptian women who wore a red jasper in their waist-girdles called the stone "a drop of the blood of Isis (the mother goddess)".

Red symbolism is everywhere connected with lifeblood and the "vital spark"—the hot "blood of life". Brinton¹⁵ has shown that in the North American languages the word for blood is derived from the word for red or the word for fire. The ancient Greek custom of painting red the wooden images of gods was evidently connected with the belief that a supply of lifeblood was thus assured, and that the colour animated the Deity, as Homer's ghosts were animated by a blood offering when Odysseus visited Hades. "The anointing of idols with blood for the purpose of animating them is", says Farnell, "a part of old Mediterranean magic."¹⁶ The ancient Egyptians, as has been indicated, painted their gods, some of whom wore red garments; a part of their underworld Dewat was "Red Land", and there were "red souls" in it.¹⁷ In India standing stones connected with deities are either painted red or smeared with the blood of a sacrificed animal. The Chinese regard red as the colour of fire and light, and in their philosophy they identify it with Yang, the chief principle of life;¹⁸ it is believed "to expel pernicious influences, and thus particularly to symbolize good luck, happiness, delight, and pleasure". Red coffins are favoured. The "red gate" on the south side of a cemetery "is never opened except for the passage of an Emperor".¹⁹ The Chinese put a powdered red stone called hun-hong in a drink or in food to destroy an evil spirit which may have taken possession of one. Red earth is eaten for a similar reason by the Polynesians and others. Many instances of this kind could be given to illustrate the widespread persistence of the belief in the vitalizing and protective qualities associated with red substances. In Irish Gaelic, Professor W. J. Watson tells me, "ruadh" means both "red" and "strong".

The Crô-Magnons regarded the heart as the seat of life, having apparently discovered that it controls the distribution of blood. In the cavern of Pindal, in south-western France, is the outline of a hairy mammoth painted in red ochre, and the seat of life is indicated by a large red heart. The painting dates back to the early Aurignacian period. In other cases, as in the drawing of a large bison in the cavern of Niaux, the seat of life and the vulnerable parts are indicated by spear—or arrowheads incised on the body. The ancient Egyptians identified the heart with the mind. To them the heart was the seat of intelligence and will-power as well as the seat of life. The germ of this belief can apparently be found in the pictorial art and burial customs of the Aurignacian Crô-Magnons.

Outline of a Mammoth painted in red ochre in the Cavern of Pindal, France

The seat of life is indicated by a large red heart. (After Breuil.)

Another interesting burial custom has been traced in the Grimaldi caves. Some of the skeletons were found to have small green stones between their teeth or inside their mouths.²⁰ No doubt these were amulets. Their colour suggests that green symbolism has not necessarily a connection with agricultural religion, as some have supposed. The Crô-Magnons do not appear to have paid much attention to vegetation. In ancient Egypt the green stone (Khepera) amulet "typified the germ of life". A text says, "A scarab of green stone … shall be placed in the heart of a man, and it shall perform for him the 'opening of the mouth'"—that is, it will enable him to speak and eat again. The scarab is addressed in a funerary text, "My heart, my mother. My heart whereby I came into being." It is believed by Budge that the Egyptian custom of "burying green basalt scarabs inside or on the breasts of the dead" is as old as the first Dynasty (c. 3400 b.c.).²¹ How much older it is one can only speculate. "The Mexicans", according to Brinton, "were accustomed to say that at one time all men have been stones, and that at last they would all return to stones, and acting literally on this conviction they interred with the bones of the dead a small green stone, which was called 'the principle of life'."²² In China the custom of placing jade tongue amulets for the purpose of preserving the dead from decay and stimulating the soul to take flight to Paradise is of considerable antiquity.²³ Crystals and pebbles have been found in ancient British graves. It may well be that these pebbles were regarded as having had an intimate connection with deities, and perhaps to have been coagulated forms of what has been called "life substance". Of undoubted importance and significance was the ancient custom of adorning the dead with shells. As we have seen, this was a notable feature of the Paviland cave burial. The "Red Man" was not only smeared with red earth, but "charmed" or protected by shell amulets. In the next chapter it will be shown that this custom not only affords us a glimpse of Aurignacian religious beliefs, but indicates the area from which the Crô-Magnons came.

Professor G. Elliot Smith was the first to emphasize the importance attached in ancient times to the beliefs associated with the divine "giver of life".

CHAPTER IV
Shell Deities and Early Trade

Early Culture and Early Races—Did Civilization originate in Europe?—An Important Clue—Trade in Shells between Red Sea and Italy—Traces of Early Trade in Central Europe—Religious Value of Personal Ornaments—Importance of Shell Lore—Links between Far East and Europe—Shell Deities—A Hebridean Shell Goddess—"Milk of Wisdom"—Ancient Goddesses as Providers of Food—Gaelic "Spirit Shell" and Japanese "God Body"—Influence of Deities in Jewels, &c.—A Shakespearean Reference—Shells in Crô-Magnon Graves—Early Sacrifices—Hand Colours in Palæolithic Caves—Finger Lore and "Hand Spells".

When the question is asked, "Whence came the Crô-Magnon people of the Aurignacian phase of culture?" the answer usually given is, "Somewhere in the East". The distribution of the Aurignacian sites indicates that the new-comers entered south-western France by way of Italy—that is, across the Italian land-bridge from North Africa. Of special significance in this connection is the fact that Aurignacian culture persisted for the longest period of time in Italy. The tallest Crô-Magnons appear to have inhabited south-eastern France and the western shores of Italy. "It is probable", says Osborn, referring to the men six feet four and a half inches in height, "that in the genial climate of the Riviera these men obtained their finest development; the country was admirably protected from the cold winds of the north, refuges were abundant, and game by no means scarce, to judge from the quantity of animal bones found in the caves. Under such conditions of life the race enjoyed a fine physical development and dispersed widely."²⁴

It does not follow, however, that the tall people originated Aurignacian culture. As has been indicated, the stumpy people represented by Combe-Capelle skeletons were likewise exponents of it. "It must not be assumed", as Elliot Smith reminds us, "that the Aurignacian culture was necessarily invented by the same people who introduced it into Europe, and whose remains were associated with it … for any culture can be transmitted to an alien people, even when it has not been adopted by many branches of the race which was responsible for its invention, just as gas illumination, oil lamps, and even candles are still in current use by the people who invented the electric light, which has been widely adopted by many foreign peoples. This elementary consideration is so often ignored that it is necessary thus to emphasize it, because it is essential for any proper understanding of the history of early civilization."²⁵

No trace of Aurignacian culture has, so far, been found outside Europe. "May it not, therefore," it may be asked, "have originated in Italy or France?" In absence of direct evidence, this possibility might be admitted. But an important discovery has been made at Grimaldi in La Grotte des Enfants (the "grotto of infants"—so called because of the discovery there of the skeletons of young Crô-Magnon children). Among the shells used as amulets by those who used the grotto as a sepulchre was one (Cassis rufa) that had been carried either by a migrating folk, or by traders, along the North African coast and through Italy from some south-western Asian beach. The find has been recorded by Professor Marcellin Boule.²⁶

In a footnote, G. Dollfus writes:

"Cassis rufa, L., an Indian ocean shell, is represented in the collection at Monaco by two fragments; one was found in the lower habitation level D, the other is probably of the same origin. The presence of this shell is extraordinary, as it has no analogue in the Mediterranean, neither recent nor fossil; there exists no species in the North Atlantic or off Senegal with which it could be confounded. The fragments have traces of the reddish colour preserved, and are not fossil; one of them presents a notch which has determined a hole that seems to have been made intentionally. The species has not yet been found in the Gulf of Suez nor in the raised beaches of the Isthmus. M. Jousseaume has found it in the Gulf of Tadjoura at Aden, but it has not yet been encountered in the Red Sea nor in the raised beaches of that region. The common habitat of Cassis rufa is Socotra, besides the Seychelles, Madagascar, Mauritius, New Caledonia, and perhaps Tahiti. The fragments discovered at Mentone have therefore been brought from a great distance at a very ancient epoch by prehistoric man."

After the Crô-Magnon peoples had spread into Western and Central Europe they imported shells from the Mediterranean. At Laugerie Basse in the Dordogne, for instance, a necklace of pierced shells from the Mediterranean was found in association with a skeleton. Atlantic shells could have been obtained from a nearer sea-shore. It may be that the Rhone valley, which later became a well-known trade route, was utilized at an exceedingly remote period, and that cultural influences occasionally "flowed" along it. "Prehistoric man" had acquired some experience as a trader even during the "hunting period", and he had formulated definite religious beliefs.

It has been the habit of some archæologists to refer to shell and other necklaces, &c., as "personal ornaments". The late Dr. Robert Munro wrote in this connection:

"We have no knowledge of any phase of humanity in which the love of personal ornament does not play an important part in the life of the individual. The savage of the present day, who paints or tattoos his body, and adorns it with shells, feathers, teeth, and trinkets made of the more gaudy materials at his disposal, may be accepted as on a parallel with the Neolithic people of Europe.... Teeth are often perforated and used as pendants, especially the canines of carnivorous animals, but such ornaments are not peculiar to Neolithic times, as they were equally prevalent among the later Palæolithic races of Europe."²⁷

Modern savages have very definite reasons for wearing the so-called "ornaments", and for painting and tattooing their bodies. They believe that the shells, teeth, &c., afford them protection, and bring them luck. Earpiercing, distending the lobe of the ear, disfiguring the body, the pointing, blackening, or knocking out of teeth, are all practices that have a religious significance. Even such a highly civilized people as the Chinese perpetuate, in their funerary ceremonies, customs that can be traced back to an exceedingly remote period in the history of mankind. It is not due to "love of personal ornament" that they place cowries, jade, gold, &c., in the mouth of the dead, but because they believe that by so doing the body is protected, and given a new lease of life. The Far Eastern belief that an elixir of ground oyster shells will prolong life in the next world is evidently a relic of early shell lore. Certain deities are associated with certain shells. Some deities have, like snails, shells for "houses"; others issue at birth from shells. The goddess Venus (Aphrodite) springs from the froth of the sea, and is lifted up by Tritons on a shell; she wears a love-girdle. Hathor, the Egyptian Venus, had originally a love-girdle of shells. She appears to have originated as the personification of a shell, and afterwards to have personified the pearl within the shell. In early Egyptian graves the shell-amulets have been found in thousands. The importance of shell lore in ancient religious systems has been emphasized by Mr. J. Wilfrid Jackson in his Shells as Evidence of the Migrations of Early Culture.²⁸ He shows why the cowry and snail shells were worn as amulets and charms, and why men were impelled "to search for them far and wide and often at great peril". "The murmur of the shell was the voice of the god, and the trumpet made of a shell became an important instrument in initiation ceremonies and in temple worship." Shells protected wearers against evil, including the evil eye. In like manner protection was afforded by the teeth and claws of carnivorous animals. In Asia and Africa the belief that tigers, lions, &c., will not injure those who are thus protected is still quite widespread.

Necklace of Sea Shells, from the cave of Crô-Magnon. (After E. Lartet.)

It cannot have been merely for love of personal ornaments that the Crô-Magnons of southern France imported Indian Ocean shells, and those of Central and Western Europe created a trade in Mediterranean shells. Like the ancient inhabitants of the Nile Valley who in remote pre-dynastic times imported shells, not only from the Mediterranean but from the Red Sea, along a long and dangerous desert trade-route, they evidently had imparted to shells a definite religious significance. The "luck-girdle" of snail-shells worn by the "Red Man of Paviland" has, therefore, an interesting history. When the Crô-Magnons reached Britain they brought with them not only implements invented and developed elsewhere, but a heritage of religious beliefs connected with shell ornaments and with the red earth with which the corpse was smeared when laid in its last resting-place.

The ancient religious beliefs connected with shells appear to have spread far and wide. Traces of them still survive in districts far separated from one another and from the area of origin—the borderlands of Asia and Africa. In Japanese mythology a young god, Ohonamochie—a sort of male Cinderella—is slain by his jealous brothers. His mother makes appeal to a sky deity who sends to her aid the two goddesses Princess Cockleshell and Princess Clam. Princess Cockleshell burns and grinds her shell, and with water provided by Princess Clam prepares an elixir called "nurse's milk" or "mother's milk". As soon as this "milk" is smeared over the young god, he is restored to life. In the Hebrides it is still the custom of mothers to burn and grind the cockle-shell to prepare a lime-water for children who suffer from what in Gaelic is called "wasting". In North America shells of Unio were placed in the graves of Red Indians "as food for the dead during the journey to the land of spirits". The pearls were used in India as medicines. "The burnt powder of the gems, if taken with water, cures hæmorrhages, prevents evil spirits working mischief in men's minds, cures lunacy and all mental diseases, jaundice, &c.... Rubbed over the body with other medicines it cures leprosy and all skin diseases."²⁹ The ancient Cretans, whose culture was carried into Asia and through Europe by their enterprising sea-and-land traders and prospectors, attached great importance to the cockle-shell which they connected with their mother goddess, the source of all life and the giver of medicines and food. Sir Arthur Evans found a large number of cockle-shells, some in Faeince, in the shrine of the serpent goddess in the ruins of the Palace of Knossos. The fact that the Cretans made artificial cockle-shells is of special interest, especially when we find that in Egypt the earliest use to which gold was put was in the manufacture of models of snail-shells in a necklace.³⁰ In different countries cowrie shells were similarly imitated in stone, ivory, and metal.³¹

Shells were thought to impart vitality and give protection, not only to human beings, but even to the plots of the earliest florists and agriculturists. "Mary, Mary, quite contrairie", who in the nursery rhyme has in her garden "cockle-shells all in row", was perpetuating an ancient custom. The cockle-shell is still favoured by conservative villagers, and may be seen in their garden plots and in graveyards. Shells placed at cottage doors, on window-sills, and round fire-places are supposed to bring luck and give security, like the horse-shoe on the door.

The mother goddess, remembered as the fairy queen, is still connected with shells in Hebridean folk-lore. A Gaelic poet refers to the goddess as "the maiden queen of wisdom who dwelt in the beauteous bower of the single tree where she could see the whole world and where no fool could see her beauty". She lamented the lack of wisdom among women, and invited them to her knoll. When they were assembled there the goddess appeared, holding in her hand the copan Moire ("Cup of Mary"), as the blue-eyed limpet shell is called. The shell contained "the ais (milk) of wisdom", which she gave to all who sought it. "Many", we are told, "came to the knoll too late, and there was no wisdom left for them."³² A Gaelic poet says the "maiden queen" was attired in emerald green, silver, and mother-of-pearl.

Here a particular shell is used by an old goddess for a specific purpose. She imparts knowledge by providing a magic drink referred to as "milk". The question arises, however, if a deity of this kind was known in early times. Did the Crô-Magnons of the Aurignacian stage of culture conceive of a god or goddess in human form who nourished her human children and instructed them as do human mothers? The figure of a woman, holding in her hand a horn which appears to have been used for drinking from, is of special interest in this connection. As will be shown, the Hebridean "maiden" links with other milk-providing deities.

The earliest religious writings in the world are the Pyramid Texts of ancient Egypt which, as Professor Breasted so finely says, "vaguely disclose to us a vanished world of thought and speech". They abound "in allusions to lost myths, to customs and usages long since ended". Withal, they reflect the physical conditions of a particular area—the Nile Valley, in which the sun and the river are two outstanding natural features. There was, however, a special religious reason for connecting the sun and the river.

In these old Pyramid Texts are survivals from a period apparently as ancient as that of early Aurignacian civilization in Europe, and perhaps, as the clue afforded by the Indian shell found in the Grimaldi cave, not unconnected with it. The mother goddess, for instance, is prayed to so that she may suckle the soul of the dead Pharaoh as a mother suckles her child and never wean him.³³ Milk was thus the elixir of life, and as the mother goddess of Egypt is found to have been identified with the cowrie—indeed to have been the spirit or personification of the shell—the connection between shells and milk may have obtained even in Aurignacian times in south-western Europe. That the mother goddess of Crô-Magnons had a human form is suggested by the representations of mothers which have been brought to light. An Aurignacian statuette of limestone found in the cave of Willendorf, Lower Austria, has been called the "Venus of Willendorf". She is very corpulent—apparently because she was regarded as a giver of life. Other statues of like character have been unearthed near Mentone, and they have a striking resemblance to the figurines of fat women found in the pre-dynastic graves of Egypt and in Crete and Malta. The bas-relief of the fat woman sculptured on a boulder inside the Aurignacian shelter of Laussel may similarly have been a goddess. In her right hand she holds a bison's horn—perhaps a drinking horn containing an elixir. Traces of red colouring remain on the body. A notable fact about these mysterious female forms is that the heads are formal, the features being scarcely, if at all, indicated.

Even if no such "idols" had been found, it does not follow that the early people had no ideas about supernatural beings. There are references in Gaelic to the coich anama (the "spirit case", or "soul shell", or "soul husk"). In Japan, which has a particularly rich and voluminous mythology, there are no idols in Shinto temples. A deity is symbolized by the shintai (God body), which may be a mirror, a weapon, or a round stone, a jewel or a pearl. A pearl is a tama; so is a precious stone, a crystal, a bit of worked jade, or a necklace of jewels, ivory, artificial beads, &c. The soul of a supernatural being is called mi-tama—mi being now a honorific prefix, but originally signifying a water serpent (dragon god). The shells, of which ancient deities were personifications, may well have been to the Crô-Magnons pretty much what a tama is to the Japanese, and what magic crystals were to mediæval Europeans who used them for magical purposes. It may have been believed that in the shells, green stones, and crystals remained the influence of deities as the power of beasts of prey remained in their teeth and claws. The ear-rings and other Pagan ornaments which Jacob buried with Laban's idols under the oak at Shechem were similarly supposed to be god bodies or coagulated forms of "life substance". All idols were temporary or permanent bodies of deities, and idols were not necessarily large. It would seem to be a reasonable conclusion that all the so-called ornaments found in ancient graves were supposed to have had an intimate connection with the supernatural beings who gave origin to and sustained life. These ornaments, or charms, or amulets, imparted vitality to human beings, because they were regarded as the substance of life itself. The red jasper worn in the waist girdles of the ancient Egyptians was reputed, as has been stated, to be a coagulated drop of the blood of the mother goddess Isis. Blood was the essence of life.

The red woman or goddess of the Laussel shelter was probably coloured so as to emphasize her vitalizing attributes; the red colour animated the image.

An interesting reference in Shakespeare's Hamlet to ancient burial customs may here be quoted, because it throws light on the problem under discussion. When Ophelia's body is carried into the graveyard³⁴ one of the priests says that as "her death was doubtful" she should have been buried in "ground unsanctified"—that is, among the suicides and murderers. Having taken her own life, she was unworthy of Christian burial, and should be buried in accordance with Pagan customs. In all our old churchyards the takers of life were interred on the north side, and apparently in Shakespeare's day traditional Pagan rites were observed in the burials of those regarded as Pagans. The priest in Hamlet, therefore, says of Ophelia:

She should in ground unsanctified have lodged
Till the last trumpet; for charitable prayers,
Shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her.

There are no shards (fragments of pottery) in the Crô-Magnon graves, but flints and pebbles mingle with shells, teeth, and other charms and amulets. Vast numbers of perforated shells have been found in the burial caves near Mentone. In one case the shells are so numerous that they seem to have formed a sort of burial mantle. "Similarly," says Professor Osborn, describing another of these finds, "the female skeleton was enveloped in a bed of shells not perforated; the legs were extended, while the arms were stretched beside the body; there were a few pierced shells and a few bits of silex. One of the large male skeletons of the same grotto had the lower limbs extended, the upper limbs folded, and was decorated with a gorget and crown of perforated shells; the head rested on a block of red stone." In another case "heavy stones protected the body from disturbance; the head was decorated with a circle of perforated shells coloured in red, and implements of various types were carefully placed on the forehead and chest". The body of the Combe-Capelle man "was decorated with a necklace of perforated shells and surrounded with a great number of fine Aurignacian flints. It appears", adds Osborn, "that in all the numerous burials of these grottos of Aurignacian age and industry of the Crô-Magnon race we have the burial standards which prevailed in western Europe at this time."³⁵

It has been suggested by one of the British archæologists that the necklaces of perforated cowrie shells and the red pigment found among the remains of early man in Britain were used by children. This theory does not accord with the evidence afforded by the Grimaldi caves, in which the infant skeletons are neither coloured nor decorated. Occasionally, however, the children were interred in burial mantles of small perforated shells, while female adults were sometimes placed in beds of unperforated shells. Shells have been found in early British graves. These include Nerita litoralis, and even Patella vulgata, the common limpet. Holes were rubbed in them so that they might be strung together. In a megalithic cist unearthed in Phœnix Park, Dublin, in 1838, two male skeletons had each beside them perforated shells (Nerita litoralis). During the construction of the Edinburgh and Granton railway there was found beside a skeleton in a stone cist a quantity of cockle-shell rings. Two dozen perforated oyster-shells were found in a single Orkney cist. Many other examples of this kind could be referred to.³⁶

In the Crô-Magnon caverns are imprints of human hands which had been laid on rock and then dusted round with coloured earth. In a number of cases it is shown that one or more finger joints of the left hand had been cut off.

The practice of finger mutilation among Bushman, Australian, and Red Indian tribes, is associated with burial customs and the ravages of disease. A Bushman woman may cut off a joint of one of her fingers when a near relative is about to die. Red Indians cut off finger-joints when burying their dead during a pestilence, so as "to cut off deaths"; they sacrificed a part of the body to save the whole. In Australia finger mutilation is occasionally practised. Highland Gaelic stories tell of heroes who lie asleep to gather power which will enable them to combat with monsters or fierce enemies. Heroines awake them by cutting off a finger joint, a part of the ear, or a portion of skin from the scalp.³⁷

The colours used in drawings of hands in Palæolithic caves are black, white, red, and yellow, as the Abbé Breuil has noted. In Spain and India, the hand prints are supposed to protect dwellings from evil influences. Horse-shoes, holly with berries, various plants, shells, &c, are used for a like purpose among those who in our native land perpetuate ancient customs.

The Arabs have a custom of suspending figures of an open hand from the necks of their children, and the Turks and Moors paint hands upon their ships and houses, "as an antidote and counter charm to an evil eye; for five is with them an unlucky number; and 'five (fingers, perhaps) in your eyes' is their proverb of cursing and defiance". In Portugal the hand spell is called the figa. Southey suggests that our common phrase "a fig for him" was derived from the name of the Portuguese hand amulet.³⁸

"The figo for thy friendship" is an interesting reference by Shakespeare.³⁹ Fig or figo is probably from fico, a snap of the fingers, which in French is faire la figue, and in Italian far le fiche. Finger snapping had no doubt originally a magical significance.

CHAPTER V
New Races in Europe

The Solutrean Industry—A Racial and Cultural Intrusion—Decline of Aurignacian Art—A God-cult—The Solutrean Thor—Open-air Life—Magdalenian Culture—Decline of Flint Working—Horn and Bone Weapons and Implements—Revival of Crô-Magnon Art—The Lamps and Palettes of Cave Artists—The Domesticated Horse—Eskimos in Europe—Magdalenian Culture in England—The Vanishing Ice—Reindeer migrate Northward—New Industries—Tardenoisian and Azilian Industries—Pictures and Symbols of Azilians—"Long-heads" and "Broad-heads"—Maglemosian Culture of Fair Northerners—Pre-Neolithic Peoples in Britain.

In late Aurignacian times the influence of a new industry was felt in Western Europe. It first came from the south, and reached as far north as England where it can be traced in the caverns. Then, in time, it spread westward and wedge-like through Central Europe in full strength, with the force and thoroughness of an invasion, reaching the northern fringe of the Spanish coast. This was the Solutrean industry which had distinctive and independent features of its own. It was not derived from Aurignacian but had developed somewhere in Africa—perhaps in Somaliland, whence it radiated along the Libyan coast towards the west and eastward into Asia. The main or "true" Solutrean influence entered Europe from the south-east. It did not pass into Italy, which remained in the Aurignacian stage until Azilian times, nor did it cross the Pyrenees or invade Spain south of the Cantabrian Mountains. The earlier "influence" is referred to as "proto-Solutrean".

Solutrean is well represented in Hungary where no trace of Aurignacian culture has yet been found. Apparently that part of Europe had offered no attractions for the Crô-Magnons.

Who the carriers of this new culture were it is as yet impossible to say with confidence. They may have been a late "wave" of the same people who had first introduced Aurignacian culture into Europe, and they may have been representative of a different race. Some ethnologists incline to connect the Solutrean culture with a new people whose presence is indicated by the skulls found at Brünn and Brüx in Bohemia. These intruders had lower foreheads than the Crô-Magnons, narrower and longer faces, and low cheek-bones. It may be that they represented a variety of the Mediterranean race. Whoever they were, they did not make much use of ivory and bone, but they worked flint with surpassing skill and originality. Their technique was quite distinct from the Aurignacian. With the aid of wooden or bone tools, they finished their flint artifacts by pressure, gave them excellent edges and points, and shaped them with artistic skill. Their most characteristic flints are the so-called laurel-leaf (broad) and willow-leaf (narrow) lances. These were evidently used in the chase. There is no evidence that they were used in battle. Withal, their weapons had a religious significance. Fourteen laurel-leaf spear-heads of Solutrean type which were found together at Volgu, Saône-et-Loire, are believed to have been a votive offering to a deity. At any rate, these were too finely worked and too fragile, like some of the peculiar Shetland and Swedish knives of later times, to have been used as implements. One has retained traces of red colouring. It may be that the belief enshrined in the Gaelic saying, "Every weapon has its demon", had already come into existence. In Crete the double-axe was in Minoan times a symbol of a deity;⁴⁰ and in northern Egypt and on the Libyan coast the crossed arrows symbolized the goddess Neith; while in various countries, and especially in India, there are ancient stories about the spirits of weapons appearing in visions and promising to aid great hunters and warriors. The custom of giving weapons personal names, which survived for long in Europe, may have had origin in Solutrean times.

Art languished in Solutrean times. Geometrical figures were incised on ivory and bone; some engraving of mammoths, reindeer, and lions have been found in Moravia and France. When the human figure was depicted, the female was neglected and studies made of males. It may be that the Solutreans had a god-cult as distinguished from the goddess-cult of the Aurignacians, and that their "flint-god" was an early form of Zeus, or of Thor, whose earliest hammer was of flint. The Romans revered "Jupiter Lapis" (silex). When the solemn oath was taken at the ceremony of treaty-making, the representative of the Roman people struck a sacrificial pig with the silex and said, "Do thou, Diespiter, strike the Roman people as I strike this pig here to-day, and strike them the more, as thou art greater and stronger". Mr. Cyril Bailey (The Religion of Ancient Rome, p. 7) expresses the view that "in origin the stone is itself the god".

During Solutrean times the climate of Europe, although still cold, was drier that in Aurignacian times. It may be that the intruders seized the flint quarries of the Crô-Magnons, and also disputed with them the possession of hunting-grounds. The cave art declined or was suspended during what may have been a military regime and perhaps, too, under the influence of a new religion and new social customs. Open-air camps beside rock-shelters were greatly favoured. It may be, as has been suggested, that the Solutreans were as expert as the modern Eskimos in providing clothing and skin-tents. Bone needles were numerous. They fed well, and horse-flesh was a specially favoured food.

In their mountain retreats, the Aurignacians may have concentrated more attention than they had previously done on the working of bone and horn; it may be that they were reinforced by new races from north-eastern Europe, who had been developing a distinctive industry on the borders of Asia. At any rate, the industry known as Magdalenian became widespread when the ice-fields crept southward again, and southern and central Europe became as wet and cold as in early Aurignacian times. Solutrean culture gradually declined and vanished and Magdalenian became supreme.

The Magdalenian stage of culture shows affinities with Aurignacian and betrays no influence of Solutrean technique. The method of working flint was quite different. The Magdalenians, indeed, appear to have attached little importance to flint for implements of the chase. They often chipped it badly in their own way and sometimes selected flint of poor quality, but they had beautiful "scrapers" and "gravers" of flint. It does not follow, however, that they were a people on a lower stage of culture than the Solutreans. New inventions had rendered it unnecessary for them to adopt Solutrean technique. Most effective implements of horn and bone had come into use and, if wars were waged—there is no evidence of warfare—the Magdalenians were able to give a good account of themselves with javelins and exceedingly strong spears which were given a greater range by the introduction of spear-throwers—"cases" from which spears were thrown. The food supply was increased by a new method of catching fish. Barbed harpoons of reindeer-horn had been invented, and no doubt many salmon, &c., were caught at river-side stations.

The Crô-Magnons, as has been found, were again in the ascendant, and their artistic genius was given full play as in Aurignacian times, and, no doubt, as a result of the revival of religious beliefs that fostered art as a cult product. Once again the painters, engravers, and sculptors adorned the caves with representations of wild animals. Colours were used with increasing skill and taste. The artists had palettes on which to mix their colours, and used stone lamps, specimens of which have been found, to light up their "studios" in deep cave recesses. During this Magdalenian stage of culture the art of the Crô-Magnons reached its highest standard of excellence, and grew so extraordinarily rich and varied that it compares well with the later religious arts of ancient Egypt and Babylonia.

The horse appears to have been domesticated. There is at Saint Michel d'Arudy a "Celtic" horse depicted with a bridle, while at La Madeleine was found a "bâton de commandement" on which a human figure, with a stave in his right hand, walks past two horses which betray no signs of alarm.

Our knowledge is scanty regarding the races that occupied Europe during Magdalenian times. In addition to the Crô-Magnons there were other distinctive types. One of these is represented by the Chancelade skeleton found at Raymonden shelter. Some think it betrays Eskimo affinities and represents a racial "drift" from the Russian steppes. In his Ancient Hunters Professor Sollas shows that there are resemblances between Eskimo and Magdalenian artifacts.

The Magdalenian culture reached England, although it never penetrated into Italy, and was shut out from the greater part of Spain. It has been traced as far north as Derbyshire, on the north-eastern border of which the Cresswell caves have yielded Magdalenian relics, including flint-borers, engravers, &c., and bone implements, including a needle, an awl, chisels, an engraving of a horse on bone, &c. Kent's Cavern, near Torquay in Devonshire, has also yielded Magdalenian flints and implements of bone, including pins, awls, barbed harpoons, &c.

During early Magdalenian times, however, our native land did not offer great attractions to Continental people. The final glacial epoch may have been partial, but it was severe, and there was a decided lowering of the temperature. Then came a warmer and drier spell, which was followed by the sixth partial glaciation. Thereafter the "great thaw" opened up Europe to the invasion of new races from Asia and Africa.

Three distinct movements of peoples in Europe can be traced in post-Magdalenian times, and during what has been called the "Transition Period", between the Upper Palæolithic and Lower Neolithic Ages or stages. The ice-cap retreated finally from the mountains of Scotland and Sweden, and the reindeer migrated northward. Magdalenian civilization was gradually broken up, and the cave art suffered sharp decline until at length it perished utterly. Trees flourished in areas where formerly the reindeer scraped the snow to crop moss and lichen, and rich pastures attracted the northward migrating red deer, the roe-deer, the ibex, the wild boar, wild cattle, &c.

The new industries are known as the Tardenoisian, the Azilian, and the Maglemosian.

Geometric or "Pygmy" Flints. (After Breuil.)

1, From Tunis and Southern Spain. 2, From Portugal. 3, 4, Azilian types. 5, 6, 7, Tardenoisian types.

Tardenoisian flints are exceedingly small and beautifully worked, and have geometric forms; they are known as "microliths" and "pygmy flints". They were evidently used in catching fish, some being hooks and others spear-heads; and they represent a culture that spread round the Mediterranean basin: these flints are found in northern Egypt, Tunis, Algeria, and Italy; from Italy they passed through Europe into England and Scotland. A people who decorated with scenes of daily life rock shelters and caves in Spain, and hunted red deer and other animals with bows and arrows, were pressing northward across the new grass-lands towards the old Magdalenian stations. Men wore pants and feather head-dresses; women had short gowns, blouses, and caps, as had the late Magdalenians, and both sexes wore armlets, anklets, and other ornaments of magical potency. Females were nude when engaged in the chase. The goddess Diana had evidently her human prototypes. There were ceremonial dances, as the rock pictures show; women lamented over graves, and affectionate couples—at least they seem to have been affectionate—walked hand in hand as they gradually migrated towards northern Spain, and northern France and Britain. The horse was domesticated, and is seen being led by the halter. Wild animal "drives" were organized, and many victims fell to archer and spearman. Arrows were feathered; bows were large and strong. Symbolic signs indicate that a script similar to those of the Ægean area, the northern African coast, and pre-dynastic Egypt was freely used. Drawings became conventional, and ultimately animals and human beings were represented by signs. This culture lasted after the introduction of the Neolithic industry in some areas, and in others after the bronze industry had been adopted by sections of the people.

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1

Book of Llan Daf.

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2

Dr. Hugh Cameron Gillies in Home Life of the Highlanders, Glasgow, 1911, pp. 85 et seq.

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3

A pestle or stone was used to pound grain in hollowed slabs or rocks before the mechanical mill was invented.

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4

Primitive Man.

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5

Men of the Old Stone Age (1916), pp. 240-1.

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6

British Museum—A Guide to the Antiquities of the Stone Age, p. 76 (1900).

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7

Miller had adopted the "stratification theory" of Professor William Robertson of Edinburgh University, who, in his The History of America (1777), wrote: "Men in their savage state pass their days like the animals round them, without knowledge or veneration of any superior power".

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8

Custom and Myth (1910 edition), p. 13. Lang's views regarding flints are worthless.

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9

The last division of the Tertiary period.

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10

It must be borne in mind that the lengths of these periods are subject to revision. Opinion is growing that they were not nearly so long as here stated.

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11

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. XLIII, 1913.

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12

For principal references see The Races of Europe, W. Z. Ripley, pp. 172 et seq., and The Anthropological History of Europe, John Beddoe (Rhind lectures for 1891; revised edition, 1912), p. 47.

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13

That is, the tall representatives of the Crô-Magnon races.

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14

Men of the Old Stone Age, pp. 335-6.

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15

Myths of the New World, p. 163.

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16

Cults of the Greek States, Vol. V. p. 243.

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17

Budge, Gods of the Egyptians. Vol. I, p. 203.

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18

De Groot, The Religious System of China, Book I, pp. 216-7.

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19

Ibid., Book I, pp. 28 and 332.

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20

I am indebted to the Abbé Breuil for this information which he gave me during the course of a conversation.

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21

Budge, Gods of the Egyptians, Vol. I, p. 358. These scarabs have not been found in the early Dynastic graves. Green malachite charms, however, were used in even the pre-Dynastic period.

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22

The Myths of the New World, p. 294. According to Bancroft the green stones were often placed in the mouths of the dead.

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23

Laufer, Jade, pp. 294 et seq. (Chicago, 1912).

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24

Men of the Old Stone Age, pp. 297-8.

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25

Primitive Man (Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. VII).

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26

Les Grottes de Grimaldi (Baousse-Rousse), Tome I, fasc. II—Géologie et Paléontologie (Monaco, 1906), p. 123.

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27

Prehistoric Britain, pp. 142-3.

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28

London, 1917.

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29

Shells as Evidence of the Migrations of Early Culture, pp. 84-91.

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30

G. A. Reisner. Early Dynastic Cemeteries of Naga-ed-Der, Vol. I, 1908, Plates 6 and 7.

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31

Jackson's Shells, pp. 128, 174, 176, 178.

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32

Dr. Alexander Carmichael, Carmina Gadeiica, Vol. II, pp.247 et seq. Mr. Wilfrid Jackson, author of Shells as Evidence of the Migrations of Early Culture, tells me that the "blue-eyed limpet" is our common limpet—Patella vulgata—the Lepas, Patelle, Jambe, Œil de boue, Bernicle, or Flie of the French. In Cornwall it is the "Crogan", the "Bornigan", and the "Brennick". It is "flither" of the English, "flia" of the Faroese, and "lapa" of the Portuguese. A Cornish giant was once, according to a folk-tale, set to perform the hopeless task of emptying a pool with a single limpet which had a hole in it. Limpets are found in early British graves and in the "kitchen middens". They are met with in abundance in cromlechs, on the Channel Isles and in Brittany, covering the bones and the skulls of the dead. Mr. Jackson thinks they were used like cowries for vitalizing and protecting the dead.

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33

Breasted, Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, p. 130.

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34

Hamlet, V. i.

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35

Men of the Old Stone Age, pp.304-5.

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36

A Red Sea cowry shell (Cyprœa minor) found on the site of Hurstbourne station (L. & S. W. Railway, main line) in Hampshire, was associated with "Early Iron Age" artifacts. (Paper read by J. R. le B. Tomlin at meeting of Linnæan Society, June 14, 1921.)

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37

For references see my Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe, pp.30-31.

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38

Notes to Thalaba, Book V, Canto 36.

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39

Henry V, V, iii, 6.

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40

For other examples see Mr. Legge's article in Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology, 1899. p. 310.

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