Ancient Man in Britain
by Donald A. Mackenzie · English · Gutenberg #43750 · 519,457 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Ancient Man in Britain
Author: Donald A. Mackenzie
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ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1915, by Charles Scribner's Sons
HEAD OF A CRÔ-MAGNON MAN
After the restoration modelled by J. H. McGregor. Reproduced by
permission from _Men of the Old Stone Age_ by Henry Fairfield
Osborn.]
ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN
by
DONALD A. MACKENZIE
Author of "Egyptian Myth and Legend"
"Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe" "Colour Symbolism" &c.
With Foreword by G. Elliot Smith, F.R.S.
Blackie And Son Limited
50 Old Bailey, London; Glasgow, Bombay
Printed in Great Britain
1922
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.
CONTENTS
CHAP. Page
I. BRITONS OF THE STONE AGE 1
II. EARLIEST TRACES OF MODERN MAN 8
III. THE AGE OF THE "RED MAN" OF WALES 19
IV. SHELL DEITIES AND EARLY TRADE 35
V. NEW RACES IN EUROPE 49
VI. THE FAITHFUL DOG 61
VII. ANCIENT MARINERS REACH BRITAIN 67
VIII. NEOLITHIC TRADE AND INDUSTRIES 79
IX. METAL WORKERS AND MEGALITHIC MONUMENTS 87
X. CELTS AND IBERIANS AS INTRUDERS AND TRADERS 109
XI. RACES OF BRITAIN AND IRELAND 121
XII. DRUIDISM IN BRITAIN AND GAUL 140
XIII. THE LORE OF CHARMS 157
XIV. THE WORLD OF OUR ANCESTORS 167
XV. WHY TREES AND WELLS WERE WORSHIPPED 176
XVI. ANCIENT PAGAN DEITIES 195
XVII. HISTORICAL SUMMARY 209
INDEX 231
LIST OF PLATES
Page
HEAD OF A CRÔ-MAGNON MAN _Frontispiece_
EXAMPLES OF LOWER PALÆOLITHIC INDUSTRIES FOUND IN
ENGLAND 12
WESTERN EUROPE DURING THE THIRD INTER-GLACIAL EPOCH 16
EXAMPLES OF PALÆOLITHIC ART 56
FLINT LANCE HEADS FROM IRELAND 80
CHIPPED AND POLISHED ARTIFACTS FROM SOUTHERN ENGLAND 80
THE RING OF STENNIS, ORKNEY 96
MEGALITHS--KIT'S COTY HOUSE, KENT; TRETHEVY STONE,
CORNWALL 100
ENAMELLED BRONZE SHIELD 116
EUROPEAN TYPES 124
RUINS OF PICTISH TOWER AT CARLOWAY, LEWIS 128
A SCOTTISH "BROCH" (MOUSA, SHETLAND ISLES) 132
A SARDINIAN NURAGHE 136
MEGALITHS--DOLMEN, NEAR BIRORI, SARDINIA; TYNEWYDD
DOLMEN 160
ONE OF THE GREAT TRILITHONS, STONEHENGE 172
BRONZE URN AND CAULDRON 204
BRONZE BUCKLERS OR SHIELDS 224
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
CHELLEAN _COUP DE POING_ OR "HAND AXE" 14
UPPER PALÆOLITHIC IMPLEMENTS 21
SKULL OF A CRÔ-MAGNON MAN: FRONT AND SIDE VIEWS 24
OUTLINE OF A MAMMOTH 33
NECKLACE OF SEA SHELLS 39
GEOMETRIC OR "PYGMY" FLINTS 54
A NOTABLE EXAMPLE OF LATE MAGDALENIAN CULTURE 58
HORN AND BONE IMPLEMENTS 59
SKETCH OF A BOAT, AND CRUDE DRAWING OF A SIMILAR BOAT 75
MAP OF ENGLAND & WALES 82
LONG-HEAD (DOLICHOCEPHALIC) SKULL 88
BROAD-HEAD (BRACHYCEPHALIC) SKULL 88
BEADS FROM BRONZE AGE BARROWS 105
WEAPONS AND RELIGIOUS OBJECTS 114
CULT ANIMALS AND "WONDER BEASTS" 154
DIAGRAM OF THE GAELIC AIRTS 169
SEAL OF CITY OF GLASGOW 185
ANCIENT MAN IN BRITAIN
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 book[1]
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."
[1] _Book of Llan Daf._
"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]
[2] Dr. Hugh Cameron Gillies in _Home Life of the Highlanders_,
Glasgow, 1911, pp. 85 _et seq._
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.
[3] A pestle or stone was used to pound grain in hollowed slabs
or rocks before the mechanical mill was invented.
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]
[4] _Primitive Man._
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]
[5] _Men of the Old Stone Age_ (1916), pp. 240-1.
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]
[6] _British Museum--A Guide to the Antiquities of the Stone
Age_, p. 76 (1900).
[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".
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]
[8] _Custom and Myth_ (1910 edition), p. 13. Lang's views
regarding flints are worthless.
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".
[Illustration: Mousterian type
(from Suffolk)]
[Illustration: Acheulian type
(from Suffolk)]
[Illustration: Photos. Oxford University Press
Chellean type
(from the Thames gravel)]
[Illustration:
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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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 Pliocene[9] 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.
[9] The last division of the Tertiary period.
During the Fourth Post-glacial epoch there were for a period of about
25,000 years[10] partial glaciations and milder intervals, until
during the Neolithic Age of the archæologists the climate of Europe
reached the phase that at present prevails.
[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.
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]
[11] _Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute_, Vol.
XLIII, 1913.
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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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]
[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.
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]
[13] That is, the tall representatives of the Crô-Magnon races.
[14] _Men of the Old Stone Age_, pp. 335-6.
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". Brinton[15] 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".
[15] _Myths of the New World_, p. 163.
[16] _Cults of the Greek States_, Vol. V. p. 243.
[17] Budge, _Gods of the Egyptians_. Vol. I, p. 203.
[18] De Groot, _The Religious System of China_, Book I, pp. 216-7.
[19] _Ibid._, Book I, pp. 28 and 332.
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.
[Illustration: 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.
[20] I am indebted to the Abbé Breuil for this information which
he gave me during the course of a conversation.
[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.
[22] _The Myths of the New World_, p. 294. According to Bancroft
the green stones were often placed in the mouths of the dead.
[23] Laufer, _Jade_, pp. 294 _et seq._ (Chicago, 1912).
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]
[24] _Men of the Old Stone Age_, pp. 297-8.
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]
[25] Primitive Man (_Proceedings of the British Academy_, Vol.
VII).
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]
[26] _Les Grottes de Grimaldi (Baousse-Rousse)_, Tome I, fasc.
II--_Géologie et Paléontologie_ (Monaco, 1906), p. 123.
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]
[27] _Prehistoric Britain_, pp. 142-3.
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.
[28] London, 1917.
[Illustration: 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]
[29] _Shells as Evidence of the Migrations of Early Culture_, pp.
84-91.
[30] G. A. Reisner. _Early Dynastic Cemeteries of Naga-ed-Der_,
Vol. I, 1908, Plates 6 and 7.
[31] Jackson's _Shells_, pp. 128, 174, 176, 178.
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.
[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, OEil 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.
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.
[33] Breasted, _Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt_, p. 130.
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 graveyard[34] 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_.
[34] _Hamlet_, V. i.
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]
[35] _Men of the Old Stone Age_, pp.304-5.
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 Phoenix 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]
[36] A Red Sea cowry shell (_Cyproea 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.)
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]
[37] For references see my _Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic
Europe_, pp.30-31.
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]
[38] Notes to _Thalaba_, Book V, Canto 36.
"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.
[39] _Henry V_, V, iii, 6.
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.
[40] For other examples see Mr. Legge's article in _Proceedings
of the Society of Biblical Archæology_, 1899. p. 310.
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.
[Illustration: 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.
When the Magdalenian harpoon of reindeer horn was imitated by the
flat harpoon of red-deer horn, this new culture became what is known
as Azilian. It met and mingled with Tardenoisian, which appears to
have arrived later, and the combined industries are referred to as
Azilian-Tardenoisian.
While the race-drifts, represented by the carriers of the Azilian and
Tardenoisian industries, were moving into France and Britain, another
invasion from the East was in progress. It is represented in the
famous Ofnet cave where long-heads and broad-heads were interred. The
Asiatic Armenoids (Alpine type) had begun to arrive in Europe, the
glaciers having vanished in Asia Minor. Skulls of broad-heads found
in the Belgian cave of Furfooz, in which sixteen human skeletons were
unearthed in 1867, belong to this period. The early Armenoids met and
mingled with representatives of the blond northern race, and were the
basis of the broad-headed blonds of Holland, Denmark, and Belgium.
[Illustration: EXAMPLES OF PALÆOLITHIC ART
The objects include: handles of knives and daggers carved in
ivory and bone, line drawings of wild animals, faces of masked
men, of animal-headed deity or masked man with arms uplifted
(compare Egyptian "Ka" attitude of adoration), of wild horses on
perforated _bâton de commandement_, of man stalking a bison, of
seal, cow, reindeer, cave-bear, &c., and perforated amulets.]
Maglemosian culture is believed to have been introduced by the
ancestors of the fair peoples of Northern Europe. It has been
so named after the finds at Maglemose in the "Great Moor", near
Mullerup, on the western coast of Zeeland. A lake existed at this
place at a time when the Baltic was an inland water completely
shut off from the North Sea. In a peat bog, formerly the bed of the
lake, were found a large number of flint and bone artifacts. These
included Tardenoisian microliths, barbed harpoons of bone, needles
of bone, spears of bone, &c. Bone was more freely used than horn
for implements and weapons. The animals hunted included the stag,
roe-deer, moose, wild ox, and wild boar. Dogs were domesticated.
It appears that the Maglemosians were lake-dwellers. Their houses,
however, had not been erected on stilts, but apparently on a floating
platform of logs, which was no doubt anchored or moored to the shore.
There are traces of Magdalenian influence in Maglemosian culture.
Although many decorative forms on bone implements and engravings on
rocks are formal and symbolic, there are some fine and realistic
representations of animals worthy of the Magdalenian cave artists.
Traces of the Maglemosian racial drift have been obtained on both
sides of the Baltic and in the Danish kitchen middens. Engravings
on rocks at Lake Onega in Northern Russia closely resemble typical
Maglemosian work. Apparently the northern fair peoples entered Europe
from Western Siberia, and in time were influenced by Neolithic
culture. But before the Europeans began to polish their stone
implements and weapons, the blond hunters and fishermen settled not
only in Denmark and Southern Sweden and Norway but also in Britain.
At the time when the Baltic was an inland fresh-water lake, the
southern part of the North Sea was dry land, and trees grew on Dogger
Bank, from which fishermen still occasionally lift in their trawls
lumps of "moor-log" (peat) and the bones of animals, including those
of the reindeer, the red deer, the horse, the wild ox, the bison, the
Irish elk, the bear, the wolf, the beaver, the woolly rhinoceros,
the mammoth, and the walrus. No doubt the Maglemosians found their
way over this "land-bridge", crossing the rivers in rude boats, and
on foot when the rivers were frozen. Evidence has been forthcoming
that they also followed the present coast line towards Boulogne, near
which a typical Maglemosian harpoon has been discovered.
[Illustration: A Notable Example of late Magdalenian Culture:
engraving on bone of browsing reindeer. From Kesserloch,
Switzerland. (After Heim.)]
Traces of Maglemosian influence have been found as far north as
Scotland on the Hebridean islands of Oronsay and Risga. The MacArthur
cave at Oban reveals Azilian artifacts. In the Victoria cave near
Settle in Yorkshire a late Magdalenian or proto-Azilian harpoon
made of reindeer-horn is of special interest, displaying, as it
does, a close connection between late Magdalenian and early Azilian.
Barbed harpoons, found at the shelter of Druimvargie, near Oban, are
Azilian, some displaying Maglemosian features. Barbed harpoons of
bone, and especially those with barbs on one side only, are generally
Maglemosian, while those of horn and double-barbed are typically
Azilian.
[Illustration: Horn and Bone Implements
Harpoons: 1 and 2, from MacArthur Cave, Oban; 3, from Laugerie
Basse rock-shelter, France; 4, from shell-heap, Oronsay,
Hebrides; 5, from bed of River Dee near Kirkcudbright; 6, from
Palude Brabbie, Italy--all of Azilian type. 8, Reindeer-horn
harpoon of late Magdalenian, or proto-Azilian, type from Victoria
Cave, near Settle, Yorks. 9, Maglemosian, or Azilian-Maglemosian,
harpoon from rock-shelter, Druimvargie, Oban. 7, 10, 11, 12, 13,
and 14, bone and deer-horn implements from MacArthur Cave, Oban.]
Apparently the fair Northerners, the carriers of Maglemosian culture,
and the dark Iberians, the carriers of Azilian culture, met and
mingled in Scotland and England long before the Neolithic industry
was introduced. There were also, it would appear, communities in
Britain of Crô-Magnons, and perhaps of other racial types that
existed on the Continent and in late Magdalenian times. The fair
peoples of England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland are not therefore
all necessarily descendants of Celts, Angles, Saxons, and Vikings.
The pioneer settlers in the British Isles, in all probability,
included blue and grey-eyed and fair or reddish-haired peoples who
in Scotland may have formed the basis of the later Caledonian type,
compared by Tacitus to the Germans, but bearing an undoubted Celtic
racial name, the military aristocrats being Celts.[41]
[41] The Abbé Breuil, having examined the artifacts associated
with the Western Scottish harpoons, inclines to refer to
the culture as "Azilian-Tardenoisian". At the same time he
considers the view that Maglemosian influence was operating is
worthy of consideration. He notes that traces of Maglemosian
culture have been reported from England. The Abbé has detected
Magdalenian influence in artifacts from Campbeltown, Argyllshire
(_Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries in Scotland_, 1921-2).
CHAPTER VI
The Faithful Dog
Transition Period between Palæolithic and Neolithic
Ages--Theory of the Neolithic Edge--Crô-Magnon Civilization was
broken up by Users of Bow and Arrow--Domesticated Dog of Fair
Northerners--Dogs as Guides and Protectors of Man--The Dog in
Early Religion--Dog Guides of Souls--The Dog of Hades--Dogs and
Death--The Scape-dog in Scotland--Souls in Dog Form--Traces of
Early Domesticated Dogs--Romans imported British Dogs.
The period we have now reached is regarded by some as that of
transition between the Palæolithic and Neolithic Ages, and by
others as the Early Neolithic period. It is necessary, therefore,
that we should keep in mind that these terms have been to a great
extent divested of the significance originally attached to them.
The transition period was a lengthy one, extending over many
centuries during which great changes occurred. It was much longer
than the so-called "Neolithic Age". New races appeared in Europe and
introduced new habits of life and thought, new animals appeared and
animals formerly hunted by man retreated northward or became extinct;
the land sank and rose; a great part of the North Sea and the English
Channel was for a time dry land, and trees grew on the plateau now
marked by the Dogger Bank during this "Transition Period", and
before it had ended the Strait of Dover had widened and England was
completely cut off from the Continent.
Compared with these great changes the invention of the polished
axe edge seems almost trivial. Yet some writers have regarded
this change as being all-important. "On the edge ever since its
discovery", writes one of them with enthusiasm, "has depended and
probably will depend to the end of time the whole artistic and
artificial environment of human existence, in all its infinite varied
complexity.... By this discovery was broken down a wall that for
untold ages had dammed up a stagnant, unprogressive past, and through
the breach were let loose all the potentialities of the future
civilization of mankind. It was entirely due to the discovery of the
edge that man was enabled, in the course of time, to invent the art
of shipbuilding."[42]
[42] Eirikr Magnusson in _Notes on Shipbuilding and Nautical
Terms_, London, 1906.
This is a very sweeping claim and hardly justified by the evidence
that of late years has come to light. Much progress had been
achieved before the easy method of polishing supplanted that of
secondary working. The so-called Palæolithic implements were not
devoid of edges. What really happened was that flint-working was
greatly simplified. The discovery was an important one, but it
was not due to it alone that great changes in habits of life were
introduced. Long before the introduction of the Neolithic industry,
the earliest traces of which in Western Europe have been obtained
at Campigny near the village of Blangy on the River Bresle, the
Magdalenian civilization of the Crô-Magnons had been broken up by the
Azilian-Tardenoisian intruders in Central and Western Europe and by
the Maglemosians in the Baltic area.
The invading hordes in Spain, so far as can be gathered from rock
pictures, made more use of bows and arrows than of spears, and it
may be that their social organization was superior to that of the
Magdalenians. Their animal "drives" suggest as much. It may be
that they were better equipped for organized warfare--if there was
warfare--and for hunting by organizing drives than the taller and
stronger Crô-Magnons. When they reached the Magdalenian stations they
adopted the barbed harpoon, imitating reindeer-horn forms in red-deer
horn.
The blond Maglemosians in the Baltic area introduced from Asia the
domesticated dog. They were thus able to obtain their food supply
with greater ease than did the Solutreans with their laurel-leaf
lances, or the Magdalenians with their spears tipped with bone or
horn. When man was joined by his faithful ally he met with more
success than when he pursued the chase unaided. Withal, he could
take greater risks when threatened by the angry bulls of a herd, and
operate over more extended tracks of country with less fear of attack
by beasts of prey. His dogs warned him of approaching peril and
guarded his camp by night.
Hunters who dwelt in caves may have done so partly for protection
against lions and bears and wolves that were attracted to hunters'
camps by the scent of flesh and blood. No doubt barriers had to be
erected to shield men, women, and children in the darkness; and it
may be that there were fires and sentinels at cave entrances.
The introduction of the domesticated dog may have influenced the
development of religious beliefs. Crô-Magnon hunters appear to have
performed ceremonies in the depths of caverns where they painted and
carved wild animals, with purpose to obtain power over them. Their
masked dances, in which men and women represented wild animals,
chiefly beasts of prey, may have had a similar significance. The
fact that, during the Transition Period, a cult art passed out of
existence, and the caves were no longer centres of culture and
political power, may have been directly or indirectly due to the
domestication of the dog and the supremacy achieved by the intruders
who possessed it.
There can be no doubt that the dog played its part in the development
of civilization. As much is suggested by the lore attaching to this
animal. It occupies a prominent place in mythology. The dog which
guided and protected the hunter in his wanderings was supposed to
guide his soul to the other world.
He thought admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog would bear him company.
In Ancient Egypt the dog-headed god Anubis was the guide and
protector of souls. Apuatua, an early form of Osiris, was a dog god.
Yama, the Hindu god of death, as Dharma, god of justice, assumed his
dog form to guide the Panadava brothers to Paradise, as is related
in the Sanskrit epic the _Mahá-bhárata_[43]. The god Indra, the
Hindu Jupiter, was the "big dog", and the custom still prevails
among primitive Indian peoples of torturing a dog by pouring hot oil
into its ears so that the "big dog" may hear and send rain. In the
_Mahá-bhárata_ there is a story about Indra appearing as a hunter
followed by a pack of dogs. As the "Wild Huntsman" the Scandinavian
god Odin rides through the air followed by dogs. The dog is in Greek
mythology the sentinel of Hades; it figures in a like capacity in
the Hades of Northern Mythology. Cuchullin, the Gaelic hero, kills
the dog of Hades and takes its place until another dog is found and
trained, and that is why he is called "Cu" (the dog) of Culann. A
pool in Kildonan, Sutherland, which was reputed to contain a pot
of gold, was supposed to be guarded by a big black dog with two
heads. A similar legend attaches to Hound's Pool in the parish of
Dean Combe, Devonshire. In different parts of the world the dog is
the creator and ancestor of the human race, the symbol of kinship,
&c. The star Sirius was associated with the dog. In Scotland and
Ireland "dog stones" were venerated. A common surviving belief is
that dogs howl by night when a sudden death is about to occur. This
association of the dog with death is echoed by Theocritus. "Hark!"
cries Simaetha, "the dogs are barking through the town. Hecate is
at the crossways. Haste, clash the brazen cymbals." The dog-god of
Scotland is remembered as _an cù sìth_ ("the supernatural dog");
it is as big as a calf, and by night passes rapidly over land and
sea. A black demon-dog--the "Moddey Dhoo"--referred to by Scott in
_Peveril of the Peak_ was supposed to haunt Peel Castle in the Isle
of Man. A former New Year's day custom in Perthshire was to send away
from a house door a scape-dog with the words, "Get away you dog!
Whatever death of men or loss of cattle would happen in this house
till the end of the present year, may it all light on your head." A
similar custom obtained among Western Himalayan peoples. Early man
appears to have regarded his faithful companion as a supernatural
being. There are Gaelic references to souls appearing in dog form to
assist families in time of need. Not only did the dog attack beasts
of prey; in Gaelic folk-tales it is the enemy of fairies and demons,
and especially cave-haunting demons. Early man's gratitude to and
dependence on the dog seems to be reflected in stories of this kind.
[43] Pronounced ma-haw'-baw'-rata (the two final _a_'s are short).
When the Baltic peoples, who are believed to be the first "wave" of
blond Northerners, moved westward towards Denmark during the period
of the "great thaw", they must have been greatly assisted by the
domesticated dog, traces of which are found in Maglemosian stations.
Bones of dogs have been found in the Danish kitchen middens and
in the MacArthur cave at Oban. It may be that the famous breed of
British hunting dogs which were in Roman times exported to Italy were
descended from those introduced by the Maglemosian hunters. Seven
Irish dogs were in the fourth century presented to Symmachus, a Roman
consul, by his brother. "All Rome", the grateful recipient wrote,
"view them with wonder and thought they must have been brought hither
in iron cages."
Great dogs were kept in Ancient Britain and Ireland for protection
against wolves as well as for hunting wild animals. The ancient Irish
made free use in battle of large fierce hounds. In the folk-stories
of Scotland dogs help human beings to attack and overcome
supernatural beings. Dogs were the enemies of the fairies, mermaids,
&c.
Dog gods figure on the ancient sculptured stones of Scotland. The
names of the Irish heroes Cuchullin and Con-chobar were derived from
those of dog deities. "Con" is the genitive of "Cu" (dog).
CHAPTER VII
Ancient Mariners Reach Britain
Reindeer in Scotland--North Sea and English Channel
Land-bridges--Early River Rafts and River Boats--Breaking
of Land-bridges--Coast Erosion--Tilbury Man--Where were
first Boats Invented?--Ancient Boats in Britain--"Dug-out"
Canoes--Imitations of Earlier Papyri and Skin Boats--Cork
Plug in Ancient Clyde Boat--Early Swedish Boats--An African
Link--Various Types of British Boats--Daring Ancient
Mariners--The Veneti Seafarers--Attractions of Early Britain
for Colonists.
The Maglemosian (Baltic) and Azilian (Iberian) peoples, who reached
and settled in Britain long before the introduction of the Neolithic
industry, appear, as has been shown, to have crossed the great
land-bridge, which is now marked by the Dogger Bank, and the narrowed
land-bridge that connected England and France. No doubt they came at
first in small bands, wandering along the river banks and founding
fishing communities, following the herds of red deer and wild cows
that had moved northward, and seeking flints, &c. The Crô-Magnons,
whose civilization the new intruders had broken up on the Continent,
were already in Britain, where the reindeer lingered for many
centuries after they had vanished from France. The reindeer moss
still grows in the north of Scotland. Bones and horns of the reindeer
have been found in this area in association with human remains as
late as of the Roman period. In the twelfth century the Norsemen
hunted reindeer in Caithness.[44] Cæsar refers to the reindeer in
the Hercynian forest of Germany (_Gallic War_, VI, 26).
[44] _The Orkneyinga Saga_, p. 182, Edinburgh, 1873, and
_Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland_, Vol.
VIII.
The early colonists of fair Northerners who introduced the
Maglemosian culture into Britain from the Baltic area could not have
crossed the North Sea land-bridge without the aid of rafts or boats.
Great broad rivers were flowing towards the north. The Elbe and the
Weser joined one another near the island of Heligoland, and received
tributaries from marshy valleys until a long estuary wider than is
the Wash at present was formed. Another long river flowed northward
from the valley of the Zuyder Zee, the mouth of which has been traced
on the north-east of the Dogger Bank. The Rhine reached the North
Sea on the south-west of the Dogger Bank, off Flamborough Head; its
tributaries included the Meuse and the Thames. The Humber and the
rivers flowing at present into the Wash were united before entering
the North Sea between the mouth of the Rhine and the coast of East
Riding.
The Dogger Bank was then a plateau. Trawlers, as has been stated,
sometimes lift from its surface in their trawl nets lumps of peat,
which they call "moor-log", and also the bones of wild animals,
including the wild ox, the wild horse, red deer, reindeer, the elk,
the bear, the wolf, the hyæna, the beaver, the walrus, the woolly
rhinoceros, and the hairy mammoth. In the peat have been found the
remains of the white birch, the hazel, sallow, and willow, seeds
of bog-bean, fragments of fern, &c. All the plants have a northern
range. In some pieces of peat have been found plants and insects that
still flourish in Britain.[45]
[45] Clement Reid, _Submerged Forests_, pp. 45-7. London, 1913.
The easiest crossing to Britain was over the English Channel
land-bridge. It was ultimately cut through by the English Channel
river, so that the dark Azilian-Tardenoisian peoples from Central and
Western Europe and the fair Maglemosians must have required and used
rafts or boats before polished implements of Neolithic type came into
use. In time the North Sea broke through the marshes of the river
land to the east of the Thames Estuary and joined the waters of the
English Channel. The Strait of Dover was then formed. At first it
may have been narrow enough for animals to swim across or, at any
rate, for the rude river boats or rafts of the early colonists to be
paddled over in safety between tides. Gradually, however, the strait
grew wider and wider; the chalk cliffs, long undermined by boring
molluscs and scouring shingle, were torn down by great billows during
winter storms.
It may be that for a long period after the North Sea and English
Channel were united, the Dogger Bank remained an island, and that
there were other islands between Heligoland and the English coast.
Pliny, who had served with the Roman army in Germany, writing in the
first century of our era, refers to twenty-three islands between
the Texel and the Eider in Schleswig-Holstein. Seven of these have
since vanished. The west coast of Schleswig has, during the past
eighteen hundred years, suffered greatly from erosion, and alluvial
plains that formerly yielded rich harvests are now represented by
sandbanks. The Goodwin Sands, which stretch for about ten miles off
the Kentish coast, were once part of the fertile estate of Earl
Godwin which was destroyed and engulfed by a great storm towards the
end of the eleventh century. The Gulf of Zuyder Zee was formerly a
green plain with many towns and villages. Periodic inundations since
the Roman period have destroyed flourishing Dutch farms and villages
and eaten far into the land. There are records of storm-floods
that drowned on one occasion 20,000, and on another no fewer than
100,000 inhabitants.[46] It is believed that large tracts of land,
the remnants of the ancient North Sea land-bridge, have been engulfed
since about 3000 B.C., as a result not merely of erosion but the
gradual submergence of the land. This date is suggested by Mr.
Clement Reid.
[46] The dates of the greatest disasters on record are 1421,
1532, and 1570. There were also terrible inundations in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and in 1825 and 1855.
"The estimate", he says, "may have to be modified as we obtain
better evidence; but it is as well to realize clearly that we are
not dealing with a long period of great geological antiquity; we
are dealing with times when the Egyptian, Babylonian, and Minoan
(Cretan) civilizations flourished. Northern Europe was then probably
barbarous, and metals had not come into use;[47] but the amber trade
of the Baltic was probably in full swing. Rumours of any great
disaster, such as the submergence of thousands of square miles and
the displacement of large populations, might spread far and wide
along the trade routes." It may be that the legend of the Lost
Atlantis was founded on reports of such a disaster, that must have
occurred when areas like the Dogger Bank were engulfed. It may be
too that the gradual wasting away of lands that have long since
vanished propelled migrations of peoples towards the smiling coasts
of England. According to Ammianus the Druids stated that some of the
inhabitants of Gaul were descendants of refugees from sea-invaded
areas.
[47] It was not necessarily barbarous because metal weapons had
not been invented.
The gradual sinking of the land and the process of coast erosion
has greatly altered the geography of England. The beach on which
Julius Cæsar landed has long since vanished, the dwellings of the
ancient Azilian and Maglemosian colonists, who reached England in
post-Glacial times, have been sunk below the English Channel. When
Tilbury Docks were being excavated Roman remains were found embedded
in clay several feet below high-water mark. Below several layers of
peat and mud, and immediately under a bank of sand in which were
fragments of decomposed wood, was found the human skeleton known as
"Tilbury man". The land in this area was originally 80 feet above its
present level.[48] But while England was sinking Scotland was rising.
The MacArthur cave at Oban, in which Azilian hunters and fishermen
made their home on the sea-beach, is now about 30 feet above the old
sea-level.
[48] _Submerged Forests_, p. 120.
Before Dover Strait had been widened by the gradual sinking of the
land and the process of coast erosion, and before the great islands
had vanished from the southern part of the North Sea, the early
hunters and fishermen could have experienced no great difficulty in
reaching England. It is possible that the Azilian, Tardenoisian, and
Maglemosian peoples had made considerable progress in the art of
navigation. Traces of the Tardenoisian industry have been obtained
in Northern Egypt, along the ancient Libyan coast of North Africa
where a great deal of land has been submerged, and especially at
Tunis, and in Algiers, in Italy, and in England and Scotland, as has
been noted. There were boats on the Mediterranean at a very early
period. The island of Crete was reached long before the introduction
of copper-working by seafarers who visited the island of Melos, and
there obtained obsidian (natural glass) from which sharp implements
were fashioned. Egyptian mariners, who dwelt on the Delta coast,
imported cedar, not only from Lebanon but from Morocco, as has been
found from the evidence afforded by mummies packed with the sawdust
of cedar from the Atlas Mountains.[49] When this trade with Morocco
began it is impossible to say with certainty. Long before 3000 B.C.,
however, the Egyptians were building boats that were fitted with
masts and sails. The ancient mariners were active as explorers and
traders before implements of copper came into use.
[49] _The Cairo Scientific Journal_, Vol. III. No. 32 (May,
1909), p. 105.
Here we touch on a very interesting problem. Where were boats first
invented and the art of navigation developed? Rafts and floats
formed by tying together two trees or, as in Egypt, two bundles of
reeds, were in use at a very early period in various countries. In
Babylonia the "kufa", a great floating basket made watertight with
pitch or covered with skins, was an early invention. It was used
as it still is for river ferry boats. But ships were not developed
from "kufas". The dug-out canoe is one of the early prototypes of
the modern ocean-going vessel. It reached this country before the
Neolithic industry was introduced, and during that period when
England was slowly sinking and Scotland was gradually rising. Dug-out
canoes continued to come during the so-called "Neolithic" stage of
culture ere yet the sinking and rising of land had ceased. "That
Neolithic man lived in Scotland during the formation of this beach
(the 45-to 50-foot beach) is proved", wrote the late Professor James
Geikie, "by the frequent occurrence in it of his relics. At Perth,
for example, a dug-out canoe of pine was met with towards the bottom
of the carse clays; and similar finds have frequently been recorded
from the contemporaneous deposits in the valleys of the Forth and the
Clyde."[50]
[50] _Antiquity of Man in Europe_, p. 274, Edinburgh, 1914. The
term "Neolithic" is here rather vague. It applies to the Azilians
and Maglemosians as well as to later peoples.
How did early man come to invent the dug-out? Not only did he hollow
out a tree trunk by the laborious process of burning and by chipping
with a flint adze, he dressed the trunk so that his boat could be
balanced on the water. The early shipbuilders had to learn, and did
learn, for themselves, "the values of length and beam, of draught and
sweet lines, of straight keel; with high stem to breast a wave and
high stern to repel a following sea". The fashioning of a sea-worthy,
or even a river-worthy boat, must have been in ancient times as
difficult a task as was the fashioning of the first aeroplane in our
own day. Many problems had to be solved, many experiments had to
be made, and, no doubt, many tragedies took place before the first
safe model-boat was paddled across a river. The early experimenters
may have had shapes of vessels suggested to them by fish and birds,
and especially by the aquatic birds that paddled past them on the
river breast with dignity and ease. But is it probable that the
first experiments were made with trees? Did early man undertake the
laborious task of hewing down tree after tree to shape new models,
until in the end he found on launching the correctly shaped vessel
that its balance was perfect? Or was the dug-out canoe an imitation
of a boat already in existence, just as a modern ship built of
steel or concrete is an imitation of the earlier wooden ships? The
available evidence regarding this important phase of the shipping
problem tends to show that, before the dug-out was invented, boats
were constructed of light material. Ancient Egypt was the earliest
shipbuilding country in the world, and all ancient ships were
modelled on those that traded on the calm waters of the Nile. Yet
Egypt is an almost treeless land. There the earliest boats--broad,
light skiffs--were made by binding together long bundles of the
reeds of papyrus. Ropes were twisted from papyrus as well as from
palm fibre.[51] It would appear that, before dug-outs were made, the
problems of boat construction were solved by those who had invented
papyri skiffs and skin boats. In the case of the latter the skins
were stretched round a framework, sewed together and made watertight
with pitch. We still refer to the "seams" and the "skin" of a boat.
[51] Breasted, _A History of Egypt_, pp. 96-7.
The art of boat-building spread far and wide from the area of origin.
Until recently the Chinese were building junks of the same type
as they did four or five hundred years earlier. These junks have
been compared by more than one writer to the deep-sea boats of the
Egyptian Empire period. The Papuans make "dug-outs" and carve eyes
on the prows as did the ancient Egyptians and as do the Maltese,
Chinese, &c., in our own day. Even when only partly hollowed, the
Papuan boats have perfect balance in the water as soon as they are
launched.[52] The Polynesians performed religious ceremonies when
cutting down trees and constructing boats.[53] In their incantations,
&c., the lore of boat-building was enshrined and handed down. The
Polynesian boat was dedicated to the _mo-o_ (dragon-god). We still
retain a relic of an ancient religious ceremony when a bottle of wine
is broken on the bows of a vessel just as it is being launched.
[52] Wollaston, _Pygmies and Papuans (The Stone Age To-day in
Dutch New Guinea)_, London, 1912, pp. 53 et seq.
[53] Westervelt, _Legends of Old Honolulu_, pp. 97 _et seq._
After the Egyptians were able to secure supplies of cedar wood from
the Atlas Mountains or Lebanon, by drifting rafts of lashed trees
along the coast line, they made dug-out vessels of various shapes,
as can be seen in the tomb pictures of the Old Kingdom period. These
dug-outs were apparently modelled on the earlier papyri and skin
boats. A ship with a square sail spread to the wind is depicted on an
Ancient Egyptian two-handed jar in the British Museum, which is of
pre-dynastic age and may date to anything like 4000 or 5000 B.C. At
that remote period the art of navigation was already well advanced,
no doubt on account of the experience gained on the calm waters of
the Nile.
[Illustration: (_a_) Sketch of a boat from Victoria Nyanza, after
the drawing in Sir Henry Stanley's _Darkest Africa_. Only the
handles of the oars are shown. In outline the positions of some
of the oarsmen are roughly represented.
(_b_) Crude drawing of a similar boat carved upon the rocks
in Sweden during the Early Bronze Age, after Montelius. By
comparison with (_a_) it will be seen that the vertical
projections were probably intended to represent the oarsmen.
The upturned hook-like appendage at the stern is found in ancient
Egyptian and Mediterranean ships, but is absent in the modern
African vessel shown in (_a_).
These figures are taken from Elliot Smith's _Ancient Mariners_
(1918).]
The existence of these boats on the Nile at a time when great
race migrations were in progress may well account for the early
appearance of dug-outs in Northern Europe. One of the Clyde canoes,
found embedded in Clyde silt twenty-five feet above the present
sea-level, was found to have a plug of cork which could only have
come from the area in which cork trees grow--Spain, Southern France,
or Italy.[54] It may have been manned by the Azilians of Spain whose
rock paintings date from the Transition period. Similar striking
evidence of the drift of culture from the Mediterranean area towards
Northern Europe is obtained from some of the rock paintings and
carvings of Sweden. Among the canoes depicted are some with distinct
Mediterranean characteristics. One at Tegneby in Bohuslän bears a
striking resemblance to a boat seen by Sir Henry Stanley on Lake
Victoria Nyanza. It seems undoubted that the designs are of common
origin, although separated not only by centuries but by barriers of
mountain, desert, and sea extending many hundreds of miles. From
the Maglemosian boat the Viking ship was ultimately developed; the
unprogressive Victoria Nyanza boatbuilders continued through the
Ages repeating the design adopted by their remote ancestors. In both
vessels the keel projects forward, and the figure-head is that of
a goat or ram. The northern vessel has the characteristic inward
curving stern of ancient Egyptian ships. As the rock on which it
was carved is situated in a metal-yielding area, the probability is
that this type of vessel is a relic of the visits paid by searchers
for metals in ancient times, who established colonies of dark miners
among the fair Northerners and introduced the elements of southern
culture.
[54] Lyell, _Antiquity of Man_, p. 48.
The ancient boats found in Scotland are of a variety of types. One
of those at Glasgow lay, when discovered, nearly vertical, with prow
uppermost as if it had foundered; it had been built "of several
pieces of oak, though without ribs". Another had the remains of an
outrigger attached to it: beside another, which had been partly
hollowed by fire, lay two planks that appear to have been wash-boards
like those on a Sussex dug-out. A Clyde clinker-built boat, eighteen
feet long, had a keel and a base of oak to which ribs had been
attached. An interesting find at Kinaven in Aberdeenshire, several
miles distant from the Ythan, a famous pearling river, was a dug-out
eleven feet long, and about four feet broad. It lay embedded at the
head of a small ravine in five feet of peat which appears to have
been the bed of an ancient lake. Near it were the stumps of big oaks,
apparently of the Upper Forestian period.
Among the longest of the ancient boats that have been discovered
are one forty-two feet long, with an animal head on the prow, from
Loch Arthur, near Dumfries, one thirty-five long from near the River
Arun in Sussex, one sixty-three feet long excavated near the Rother
in Kent, one forty-eight feet six inches long, found at Brigg,
Lincolnshire, with wooden patches where she had sprung a leak, and
signs of the caulking of cracks and small holes with moss.
These vessels do not all belong to the same period. The date of the
Brigg boat is, judging from the geological strata, between 1100 and
700 B.C. It would appear that some of the Clyde vessels found at
twenty-five feet above the present sea-level are even older. Beside
one Clyde boat was found an axe of polished green-stone similar to
the axes used by Polynesians and others in shaping dug-outs. This
axe may, however, have been a religious object. To the low bases of
some vessels were fixed ribs on which skins were stretched. These
boats were eminently suitable for rough seas, being more buoyant than
dug-outs. According to Himilco the inhabitants of the OEstrymnides,
the islands "rich in tin and lead", had most sea-worthy skiffs.
"These people do not make pine keels, nor", he says, "do they know
how to fashion them; nor do they make fir barks, but, with wonderful
skill, fashion skiffs with sewn skins. In these hide-bound vessels,
they skim across the ocean." Apparently they were as daring mariners
as the Oregon Islanders of whom Washington Irving has written:
"It is surprising to see with what fearless unconcern these
savages venture in their light barks upon the roughest and
most tempestuous seas. They seem to ride upon the wave like
sea-fowl. Should a surge throw the canoe upon its side, and
endanger its over turn, those to the windward lean over the
upper gunwale, thrust their paddles deep into the wave, and by
this action not merely regain an equilibrium, but give their
bark a vigorous impulse forward."
The ancient mariners whose rude vessels have been excavated around
our coasts were the forerunners of the Celtic sea-traders, who,
as the Gaelic evidence shows, had names not only for the North
Sea and the English Channel but also for the Mediterranean Sea.
They cultivated what is known as the "sea sense", and developed
shipbuilding and the art of navigation in accordance with local
needs. When Julius Cæsar came into conflict with the Veneti of
Brittany he tells that their vessels were greatly superior to those
of the Romans. "The bodies of the ships", he says, "were built
entirely of oak, stout enough to withstand any shock or violence....
Instead of cables for their anchors they used iron chains.... The
encounter of our fleet with these ships was of such a nature that
our fleet excelled in speed alone, and the plying of oars; for
neither could our ships injure theirs with their rams, so great
was their strength, nor was a weapon easily cast up to them owing
to their height.... About 220 of their ships ... sailed forth from
the harbour." In this great allied fleet were vessels from our own
country.[55]
[55] Cæsar's _Gallic War_, Book III, c. 13-15.
It must not be imagined that the "sea sense" was cultivated because
man took pleasure in risking the perils of the deep. It was stern
necessity that at the beginning compelled him to venture on long
voyages. After England was cut off from France the peoples who had
adopted the Neolithic industry must have either found it absolutely
necessary to seek refuge in Britain, or were attracted towards it by
reports of prospectors who found it to be suitable for residence and
trade.
CHAPTER VIII
Neolithic Trade and Industries
Attractions of Ancient Britain--Romans search for Gold,
Silver, Pearls, &c.--The Lure of Precious Stones and
Metals--Distribution of Ancient British Population--Neolithic
Settlements in Flint-yielding Areas--Trade in
Flint--Settlements on Lias Formation--Implements from
Basic Rocks--Trade in Body-painting Materials--Search for
Pearls--Gold in Britain and Ireland--Agriculture--The Story
of Barley--Neolithic Settlers in Ireland--Scottish Neolithic
Traders--Neolithic Peoples not Wanderers--Trained Neolithic
Craftsmen.
The "drift" of peoples into Britain which began in Aurignacian times
continued until the Roman period. There were definite reasons for
early intrusions as there were for the Roman invasion. "Britain
contains to reward the conqueror", Tacitus wrote,[56] "mines of gold
and silver and other metals. The sea produces pearls." According to
Suetonius, who at the end of the first century of our era wrote the
_Lives of the Cæsars_, Julius Cæsar invaded Britain with the desire
to enrich himself with the pearls found on different parts of the
coast. On his return to Rome he presented a corselet of British
pearls to the goddess Venus. He was in need of money to further his
political ambitions. He found what he required elsewhere, however.
After the death of Queen Cleopatra sufficient gold and silver flowed
to Rome from Egypt to reduce the loan rate of interest from 12 to 4
per cent. Spain likewise contributed its share to enrich the great
predatory state of Rome.[57]
[56] _Agricola_, Chap. XII.
[57] Smith, _Roman Empire_.
Long ages before the Roman period the early peoples entered Britain
in search of pearls, precious stones, and precious metals because
these had a religious value. The Celts of Gaul offered great
quantities of gold to their deities, depositing the precious metals
in their temples and in their sacred lakes. Poseidonius of Apamea
tells that after conquering Gaul "the Romans put up these sacred
lakes to public sale, and many of the purchasers found quantities
of solid silver in them". He also says that gold was similarly
placed in these lakes.[58] Apparently the Celts believed, as did the
Aryo-Indians, that gold was "a form of the gods" and "fire, light,
and immortality", and that it was a "life giver".[59] Personal
ornaments continued to have a religious value until Christian times.
[58] _Strabo_--IV, c. 1-13.
[59] _Satapatha-Brahmana_, Pt. V, "Sacred Books of the East",
XLIV, pp. 187, 203, 236. 239, 348-50.
[Illustration: FLINT LANCE-HEADS FROM IRELAND (British Museum)]
[Illustration:
Photo Oxford University Press
CHIPPED AND POLISHED ARTIFACTS FROM SOUTHERN ENGLAND (British
Museum)]
As we have seen when dealing with the "Red Man of Paviland", the
earliest ornaments were shells, teeth of wild animals, coloured
stones, ivory, &c. Shells were carried great distances. Then arose
the habit of producing substitutes which were regarded as of great
potency as the originals. The ancient Egyptians made use of gold to
manufacture imitation shells, and before they worked copper they
wore charms of malachite, which is an ore of copper. They probably
used copper first for magical purposes just as they used gold.
Pearls found in shells were regarded as depositories of supernatural
influence, and so were coral and amber (see Chapter XIII). Like
the Aryo-Indians, the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks, and others
connected precious metals, stones, pearls, &c., with their deities,
and believed that these contained the influence of their deities,
and were therefore "lucky". These and similar beliefs are of great
antiquity in Europe and Asia and North Africa. It would be rash
to assume that they were not known to the ancient mariners who
reached our shores in vessels of Mediterranean type.
The colonists who were attracted to Britain at various periods
settled in those districts most suitable for their modes of life.
It was necessary that they should obtain an adequate supply of the
materials from which their implements and weapons were manufactured.
The distribution of the population must have been determined by the
resources of the various districts.
At the present day the population of Britain is most dense in
those areas in which coal and iron are found and where commerce is
concentrated. In ancient times, before metals were used, it must
have been densest in those areas where flint was found--that is,
on the upper chalk formations. If worked flints are discovered in
areas which do not have deposits of flint, the only conclusion that
can be drawn is that the flint was obtained by means of trade, just
as Mediterranean shells were in Aurignacian and Magdalenian times
obtained by hunters who settled in Central Europe. In Devon and
Cornwall, for instance, large numbers of flint implements have been
found, yet in these counties suitable flint was exceedingly scarce
in ancient times, except in East Devon, where, however, the surface
flint is of inferior character. In Wilts and Dorset, however, the
finest quality of flint was found, and it was no doubt from these
areas that the early settlers in Cornwall and Devon received their
chief supplies of the raw material, if not of the manufactured
articles.
In England, as on the Continent, the most abundant finds of the
earliest flint implements have been made in those areas where the
early hunters and fishermen could obtain their raw materials. River
drift implements are discovered in largest numbers on the chalk
formations of south-eastern England between the Wash and the estuary
of the Thames.
The Neolithic peoples, who made less use of horn and bone than
did the Azilians and Maglemosians, had many village settlements
on the upper chalk in Dorset and Wiltshire, and especially at
Avebury where there were veritable flint factories, and near the
famous flint mines at Grimes Graves in the vicinity of Weeting
in Norfolk and at Cissbury Camp not far from Worthing in Sussex.
Implements were likewise made of basic rocks, including quartzite,
ironstone, green-stone, hornblende schist, granite, mica-schist,
&c.; while ornaments were made of jet, a hydrocarbon compound
allied to cannel coal, which takes on a fine polish, Kimeridge
shale and ivory. Withal, like the Aurignacians and Magdalenians,
the Neolithic-industry people used body paint, which was made with
pigments of ochre, hæmatite, an ore of iron, and ruddle, an earthy
variety of iron ore.
In those districts, where the raw materials for stone implements,
ornaments, and body paint were found, traces survive of the
activities of the Neolithic peoples. Their graves of long-barrow type
are found not only in the chalk areas but on the margins of the lias
formations. Hæmatite is found in large quantities in West Cumberland
and north Lancashire and in south-western England, while the chief
source of jet is Whitby in Yorkshire, where it occurs in large
quantities in beds of the Upper Lias shale.
[Illustration: Map of ENGLAND & WALES]
Mr. W. J. Perry, of Manchester University, who has devoted special
attention to the study of the distribution of megalithic monuments,
has been drawing attention to the interesting association of these
monuments with geological formations.[60] In the Avebury district stone
circles, dolmens, chambered barrows, long barrows, and Neolithic
settlements are numerous; another group of megalithic monuments occurs
in Oxford on the margin of the lias formation, and at the south-end of
the great iron field extending as far as the Clevelands. According to
the memoir of the geological survey, there are traces of ancient surface
iron-workings in the Middle Lias formation of Oxfordshire, where red and
brown hæmatite were found. Mr. Perry notes that there are megalithic
monuments in the vicinity of all these surface workings, as at Fawler,
Adderbury, Hook Norton, Woodstock, Steeple Aston, and Hanbury.
Apparently the Neolithic peoples were attracted to the lias formatio
because it contains hæmatite, ochre, shale, &c. There are significant
megaliths in the Whitby region where the jet is so plentiful. Amber was
obtained from the east coast of England and from the Baltic.
[60] _Proceedings of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical
Society_, 1921.
The Neolithic peoples appear to have searched for pearls, which are
found in a number of English, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish rivers, and
in the vicinity of most, if not all, of these megaliths occur. Gold
was the first metal worked by man, and it appears to have attracted
some of the early peoples who settled in Britain. The ancient
seafarers who found their way northward may have included searchers
for gold and silver. The latter metal was at one time found in great
abundance in Spain, while gold was at one time fairly plentiful in
south-western England, in North Wales, in various parts of Scotland
and especially in Lanarkshire, and in north-eastern, eastern, and
western Ireland. That there was a "drift" of civilized peoples into
Britain and Ireland during the period of the Neolithic industry is
made evident by the fact that the agricultural mode of life was
introduced. Barley does not grow wild in Europe. The nearest area in
which it grew wild and was earliest cultivated was the delta area of
Egypt, the region from which the earliest vessels set out to explore
the shores of the Mediterranean. It may be that the barley seeds
were carried to Britain not by the overland routes alone to Channel
ports, but also by the seafarers whose boats, like the Glasgow one
with the cork plug, coasted round by Spain and Brittany, and crossed
the Channel to south-western England and thence went northward to
Scotland. As Irish flints and ground axe-heads occur chiefly in
Ulster, it may be that the drift of early Neolithic settlers into
County Antrim, in which gold was also found, was from south-western
Scotland. The Neolithic settlement at Whitepark Bay, five miles from
the Giant's Causeway, was embedded at a considerable depth, showing
that there has been a sinking of the land in this area since the
Neolithic industry was introduced.
Neolithic remains are widely distributed over Scotland, but these
have not received the intensive study devoted to similar relics in
England. Mr. Ludovic Mann, the Glasgow archæologist, has, however,
compiled interesting data regarding one of the local industries that
bring out the resource and activities of early man. On the island of
Arran is a workable variety of the natural volcanic glass, called
pitch-stone, that of other parts of Scotland and of Ireland being
"too much cracked into small pieces to be of use". It was used by
the Neolithic settlers in Arran for manufacturing arrowheads, and
as it was imported into Bute, Ayrshire, and Wigtownshire, a trade
in this material must have existed. "If", writes Mr. Mann, "the
stone was not locally worked up into implements in Bute, it was so
manipulated on the mainland, where workshops of the Neolithic period
and the immediately succeeding overlap period yielded long fine
flakes, testifying to greater expertness in manufacturing there than
is shown by the remains in the domestic sites yet awaiting adequate
exploration in Arran. The explanation may be that the Wigtownshire
flint knappers, accustomed to handle an abundance of flint, were
more proficient than in most other places, and that the pitch-stone
was brought to them as experts, because the material required even
more skilful handling than flint".[61] In like manner obsidian, as
has been noted, was imported into Crete from the island of Melos by
seafarers, long before the introduction of metal working.[62]
[61] _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland_,
1917-18, pp. 149 _et seq._
[62] See my _Myths of Crete and pre-Hellenic Europe_ under
"Obsidian" in Index.
It will be seen that the Neolithic peoples were no mere wandering
hunters, as some have represented them to have been, but they had
their social organization, their industries, and their system of
trading by land and sea. They settled not only in those areas where
they could procure a regular food supply, but those also in which
they obtained the raw materials for implements, weapons, and the
colouring material which they used for religious purposes. They made
pottery for grave offerings and domestic use, and wooden implements
regarding which, however, little is known. Withal, they had their
spinners and weavers. The conditions prevailing in Neolithic
settlements must have been similar to those of later times. There
must have been systems of laws to make trade and peaceful social
intercourse possible, and no doubt these had, as elsewhere, a
religious basis. Burial customs indicate a uniformity of beliefs over
wide areas. The skill displayed in working stone was so great that
it cannot now be emulated. Ripple-flaking has long been a lost art.
Craftsmen must have undergone a prolonged period of training which
was intelligently controlled under settled conditions of life. It is
possible that the so-called Neolithic folk were chiefly foreigners
who exploited the riches of the country. The evidence in this
connection will be found in the next chapter.
CHAPTER IX
Metal Workers and Megalithic Monuments
"Broad-heads" of Bronze Age--The Irish Evidence--Bronze
Introduced by Traders--How Metals were Traced--A Metal Working
Tribe--Damnonii in England, Scotland, and Ireland--Miners
as Slaves--The Lot of Women Workers--Megalithic Monuments
in English Metal-yielding Areas--Stone Circles in Barren
Localities--Early Colonies of Easterners in Spain--Egyptian
and Babylonian Relics associated with British Jet and Baltic
Amber--A New Flint Industry of Eastern Origin--British
Bronze identical with Continental--Ancient Furnaces of
Common Origin--"Stones of Worship" adorned with Metals--The
"Maggot God" of Stone Circles--Ancient Egyptian Beads at
Stonehenge--Earliest Authentic Date in British History--The Aim
of Conquests.
It used to be thought that the introduction of metal working
into Britain was the result of an invasion of alien peoples, who
partly exterminated and partly enslaved the long-headed Neolithic
inhabitants. This view was based on the evidence afforded by a new
type of grave known as the "Round Barrow". In graves of this class
have been found Bronze Age relics, a distinctive kind of pottery, and
skulls of broad-heads. The invasion of broad-heads undoubtedly took
place, and their burial customs suggest that their religious beliefs
were not identical with those of the long-heads. But it remains to be
proved that they were the actual introducers of the bronze industry.
They do not appear to have reached Ireland, where bronze relics are
associated with a long-headed people of comparatively low stature.
The early Irish bronze forms were obviously obtained from Spain,
while early English bronze forms resemble those of France and Italy.
Cutting implements were the first to be introduced. This fact does
not suggest that a conquest took place. The implements may have been
obtained by traders. Britain apparently had in those ancient times
its trading colonies, and was visited by active and enterprising
seafarers.
[Illustration: Long-head (Dolichocephalic) Skull]
[Illustration: Broad-head (Brachycephalic) Skull Both these
specimens were found in "Round" Barrows in the East Riding of
Yorkshire]
The discovery of metals in Britain and Ireland was, no doubt, first
made by prospectors who had obtained experience in working them
elsewhere. They may have simply come to exploit the country. How
these men conducted their investigations is indicated by the report
found in a British Museum manuscript, dating from about 1603, in
which the prospector gives his reason for believing that gold was
to be found on Crawford Moor in Lanarkshire. He tells that he saw
among the rocks what Scottish miners call "mothers" and English
miners "leaders" or "metalline fumes". It was believed that the
"fumes" arose from veins of metal and coloured the rocks as smoke
passing upward through a tunnel blackens it, and leaves traces on the
outside. He professed to be able to distinguish between the colours
left by "fumes" of iron, lead, tin, copper, or silver. On Crawford
Moor he found "sparr, keel, and brimstone" between rocks, and
regarded this discovery as a sure indication that gold was _in situ_.
The "mothers" or "leaders" were more pronounced than any he had ever
seen in Cornwall, Somersetshire, about Keswick, or "any other mineral
parts wheresoever I have travelled".[63] Gold was found in this area
of Lanarkshire in considerable quantities, and was no doubt worked
in ancient times. Of special interest in this connection is the fact
that it was part of the territory occupied by Damnonians,[64] who
appear to have been a metal-working people. Besides occupying the
richest metal-yielding area in Scotland, the Damnonians were located
in Devon and Cornwall, and in the east-midland and western parts
of Ireland, in which gold, copper, and tin-stone were found as in
south-western England. The Welsh _Dyfneint_ (Devon) is supposed by
some to be connected with a form of this tribal name. Another form
in a Yarrow inscription is Dumnogeni. In Ireland Inber Domnann is
the old name of Malahide Bay north of Dublin. Domnu, the genitive of
which is Domnann, was the name of an ancient goddess. In the Irish
manuscripts these people are referred to as Fir-domnann,[65] and
associated with the Fir-bolg (the men with sacks). A sack-carrying
people are represented in Spanish rock paintings that date from
the Azilian till early "Bronze Age" times. In an Irish manuscript
which praises the fair and tall people, the Fir-bolg and Fir-domnann
are included among the black-eyed and black-haired people, the
descendants of slaves and churls, and "the promoters of discord among
the people".
[63] R. W. Cochrane Patrick, _Early Records relating to Mining in
Scotland_. Edinburgh, 1878, p. xxviii.
[64] The _Damnonii_ or _Dumnonii_.
[65] The Fir-domnann were known as "the men who used to deepen
the earth", or "dig pits". Professor J. MacNeil in _Labor
Gabula_, p. 119. They were thus called "Diggers" like the modern
Australians. The name of the goddess referred to the depths (the
Underworld). It is probable she was the personification of the
metal-yielding earth.
The reference to "slaves" is of special interest because the lot of
the working miners was in ancient days an extremely arduous one.
In one of his collected records which describes the method "of the
greatest antiquity" Diodorus Siculus (A.D. first century) tells how
gold-miners, with lights bound on their foreheads, drove galleries
into the rocks, the fragments of which were carried out by frail
old men and boys. These were broken small by men in the prime of
life. The pounded stone was then ground in handmills by women: three
women to a mill and "to each of those who bear this lot, death is
better than life". Afterwards the milled quartz was spread out on an
inclined table. Men threw water on it, work it through their fingers,
and dabbed it with sponges until the lighter matter was removed and
the gold was left behind. The precious metal was placed in a clay
crucible, which was kept heated for five days and five nights. It may
be that the Scandinavian references to the nine maidens who turn the
handle of the "world mill" which grinds out metal and soil, and the
Celtic references to the nine maidens who are associated with the
Celtic cauldron, survive from beliefs that reflected the habits and
methods of the ancient metal workers.
It is difficult now to trace the various areas in which gold was
anciently found in our islands. But this is not to be wondered at.
In Egypt there were once rich goldfields, especially in the Eastern
Desert, where about 100 square miles were so thoroughly worked in
ancient times that "only the merest traces of gold remain".[66] Gold,
as has been stated, was formerly found in south-western England,
North Wales, and, as historical records, archæological data, and
place names indicate, in various parts of Scotland and Ireland.
During the period of the "Great Thaw" a great deal of alluvial gold
must have distributed throughout the country. Silver was found
in various parts. In Sutherland it is mixed with gold as it is
elsewhere with lead. Copper was worked in a number of districts
where the veins cannot in modern times be economically worked, and
tin was found in Ireland and Scotland as well as in south-western
England, where mining operations do not seem to have been begun, as
Principal Sir John Rhys has shown,[67] until after the supplies of
surface tin were exhausted. Of special interest in connection with
this problem is the association of megalithic monuments with ancient
mine workings. An interesting fact to be borne in mind in connection
with these relics of the activities and beliefs of the early peoples
is that they represent a distinct culture of complex character.
Mr. T. Eric Peet[68] shows that the megalithic buildings "occupy a
very remarkable position along a vast seaboard which includes the
Mediterranean coast of Africa and the Atlantic coast of Europe.
In other words, they lie entirely along a natural sea route." He
gives forcible reasons for arriving at the conclusion that "it is
impossible to consider megalithic building as a mere phase through
which many nations passed, and it must therefore have been a system
originating with one race, and spreading far and wide, owing either
to trade influence or migration". He adds:
"Great movements of races by sea were not by any means unusual
in primitive days. In fact, the sea has always been less of
an obstacle to early man than the land with its deserts,
mountains, and unfordable rivers. There is nothing inherently
impossible or even improbable in the suggestion that a great
immigration brought the megalithic monuments from Sweden to
India or vice versa. History is full of instances of such
migrations."
[66] Alford, _A Report on Ancient and Prospective Gold Mining in
Egypt_, 1900, and _Mining in Egypt_ (by Egyptologist).
[67] _Celtic Britain_, pp. 44 _et seq._ (4th edition).
[68] _Rough Stone Monuments_, London, 1912, pp. 147-8.
But there must have been a definite reason for these race movements.
It cannot be that in all cases they were forced merely by natural
causes, such as changes of climate, invasions of the sea, and
the drying up of once fertile districts, or by the propelling
influences of stronger races in every country from the British Isles
to Japan--that is, in all countries in which megalithic monuments
of similar type are found. The fact that the megalithic monuments
are distributed along "a vast seaboard" suggests that they were
the work of people who had acquired a culture of common origin,
and were attracted to different countries for the same reason.
What that attraction was is indicated by studying the elements of
the megalithic culture. In a lecture delivered before the British
Association in Manchester in 1915, Mr. W. J. Perry threw much light
on the problem by showing that the carriers of the culture practised
weaving linen, and in some cases the use of Tyrian purple, pearls,
precious stones, metals, and conch-shell trumpets, as well as curious
beliefs and superstitions attached to the latter, while they
"adopted certain definite metallurgical methods, as well as mining".
Mr. Perry's paper was subsequently published by the Manchester
Literary and Philosophical Society. It shows that in Western Europe
the megalithic monuments are distributed in those areas in which
ancient pre-Roman and pre-Greek mine workings and metal washings have
been traced. "The same correspondence", he writes, "seems to hold in
the case of England and Wales. In the latter country the counties
where megalithic structures abound are precisely those where mineral
deposits and ancient mine-workings occur. In England the grouping in
Cumberland, Westmorland, Northumberland, Durham, and Derbyshire is
precisely that of old mines; in Cornwall the megalithic structures
are mainly grouped west of Falmouth, precisely in that district where
mining has always been most active."
Pearls, amber, coral, jet, &c., were searched for as well as metals.
The megalithic monuments near pearling rivers, in the vicinity of
Whitby, the main source of jet, and in Denmark and the Baltic area
where amber was found were, in all likelihood, erected by people who
had come under the spell of the same ancient culture.
When, therefore, we come to deal with groups of monuments in areas
which were unsuitable for agriculture and unable to sustain large
populations, a reasonable conclusion to draw is that precious metals,
precious stones, or pearls were once found near them. The pearling
beds may have been destroyed or greatly reduced in value,[69] or the
metals may have been worked out, leaving but slight if any indication
that they were ever _in situ_. Reference has been made to the traces
left by ancient miners in Egypt where no gold is now found. In
our own day rich gold fields in Australia and North America have
been exhausted. It would be unreasonable for us to suppose that the
same thing did not happen in our country, even although but slight
traces of the precious metal can now be obtained in areas which were
thoroughly explored by ancient miners.
[69] The Scottish pearling beds have suffered great injury in
historic times. They are the property of the "Crown", and no one
takes any interest in them except the "pearl poachers".
When early man reached Scotland in search of suitable districts in
which to settle, he was not likely to be attracted by the barren
or semi-barren areas in which nature grudged soil for cultivation,
where pasture lands were poor and the coasts were lashed by great
billows for the greater part of the year, and the tempests of winter
and spring were particularly severe. Yet in such places as Carloway,
fronting the Atlantic on the west coast of Lewis, and at Stennis
in Orkney, across the dangerous Pentland Firth, are found the most
imposing stone circles north of Stonehenge and Avebury. Traces of
tin have been found in Lewis, and Orkney has yielded traces of lead,
including silver-lead, copper and zinc, and has flint in glacial
drift. Traces of tin have likewise been found on the mainlands of
Ross-shire and Argyllshire, in various islands of the Hebrides and
in Stirlingshire. The great Stonehenge circle is like the Callernish
and Stennis circles situated in a semi-barren area, but it is an area
where surface tin and gold were anciently obtained. One cannot help
concluding that the early people, who populated the wastes of ancient
Britain and erected megalithic monuments, were attracted by something
more tangible than the charms of solitude and wild scenery. They
searched for and found the things they required. If they found gold,
it must be recognized that there was a psychological motive for the
search for this precious metal. They valued gold, or whatever other
metal they worked in bleak and isolated places, because they had
learned to value it elsewhere.
Who were the people that first searched for, found, and used metals
in Western Europe? Some have assumed that the natives themselves did
so "as a matter of course". Such a theory is, however, difficult to
maintain. Gold is a useless metal for all practical purposes. It is
too soft for implements. Besides, it cannot be found or worked except
by those who have acquired a great deal of knowledge and skill. The
men who first "washed" it from the soil in Britain must have obtained
the necessary knowledge and skill in a country where it was more
plentiful and much easier to work, and where--and this point is a
most important one--the magical and religious beliefs connected with
gold have a very definite history. Copper, tin, and silver were even
more difficult to find and work in Britain. The ancient people who
reached Britain and first worked metals or collected ores were not
the people who were accustomed to use implements of bone, horn, and
flint, and had been attracted to its shores merely because fish,
fowl, deer, and cows, were numerous. The searchers for metals must
have come from centres of Eastern civilization, or from colonies of
highly skilled peoples that had been established in Western Europe.
They did not necessarily come to settle permanently in Britain, but
rather to exploit its natural riches.
This conclusion is no mere hypothesis. Siret,[70] the Belgian
archæologist, has discovered in southern Spain and Portugal traces
of numerous settlements of Easterners who searched for minerals,
&c., long before the introduction of bronze working in Western
Europe. They came during the archæological "Stone Age"; they even
introduced some of the flint implements classed as Neolithic by the
archæologists of a past generation.
[70] _L'Anthropologie_, 1921, contains a long account of his
discoveries.
These Eastern colonists do not appear to have been an organized
people. Siret considers that they were merely groups of people
from Asia--probably the Syrian coast--who were in contact with
Egypt. During the Empire period of Egypt, the Egyptian sphere of
influence extended to the borders of Asia Minor. At an earlier period
Babylonian influence permeated the Syrian coast and part of Asia
Minor. The religious beliefs of seafarers from Syria were likely
therefore to bear traces of the Egyptian and Babylonian religious
systems. Evidence that this was the case has been forthcoming in
Spain.
These Eastern colonists not only operated in Spain and Portugal, but
established contact with Northern Europe. They exported what they
had searched for and found to their Eastern markets. No doubt, they
employed native labour, but they do not appear to have instructed the
natives how to make use of the ores they themselves valued so highly.
In time they were expelled from Spain and Portugal by the people or
mixed peoples who introduced the working of bronze and made use of
bronze weapons. These bronze carriers and workers came from Central
Europe, where colonies of peoples skilled in the arts of mining and
metal working had been established. In the Central European colonies
Ægean and Danubian influences have been detected.
[Illustration:
Valentine
THE RING OF STENNIS, ORKNEY (see page 94)]
Among the archæological finds, which prove that the Easterners
settled in Iberia before bronze working was introduced among the
natives, are idol-like objects made of hippopotamus ivory from Egypt,
a shell (_Dentalium elephantum_) from the Red Sea, objects made from
ostrich eggs which must have been carried to Spain from Africa,
alabaster perfume flasks, cups of marble and alabaster of Egyptian
character which had been shaped with copper implements, Oriental
painted vases with decorations in red, black, blue, and green,[71]
mural paintings on layers of plaster, feminine statuettes in
alabaster which Siret considers to be of Babylonian type, for they
differ from Ægean and Egyptian statuettes, a cult object (found in
graves) resembling the Egyptian _ded_ amulet, &c. The Iberian burial
places of these Eastern colonists have arched cupolas and entrance
corridors of Egyptian-Mycenæan character.
[71] The colours blue and green were obtained from copper.
Of special interest are the beautifully worked flints associated with
these Eastern remains in Spain and Portugal. Siret draws attention
to the fact that no trace has been found of "flint factories". This
particular flint industry was an entirely new one. It was not a
development of earlier flint-working in Iberia. Apparently the new
industry, which suddenly appears in full perfection, was introduced
by the Eastern colonists. It afterwards spread over the whole
maritime west, including Scandinavia where the metal implements
of more advanced countries were imitated in flint. This important
fact emphasizes the need for caution in making use of such a term
as "Neolithic Age". Siret's view in this connection is that the
Easterners, who established trading colonies in Spain and elsewhere,
prevented the local use of metals which they had come to search
for and export. It was part of their policy to keep the natives in
ignorance of the uses to which metals could be put.
Evidence has been forthcoming that the operations of the Eastern
colonies in Spain and Portugal were extended towards the maritime
north. Associated with the Oriential relics already referred to,
Siret has discovered amber from the Baltic, jet from Britain
(apparently from Whitby in Yorkshire) and the green-stone called
"callais" usually found in beds of tin. The Eastern seafarers
must have visited Northern Europe to exploit its virgin riches. A
green-stone axe was found, as has been stated, near the boat with the
cork plug, which lay embedded in Clyde silt at Glasgow. Artifacts of
callais have been discovered in Brittany, in the south of France, in
Portugal, and in south-eastern Spain. In the latter area, as Siret
has proved, the Easterners worked silver-bearing lead and copper.
The colonists appear to have likewise searched for and found gold. A
diadem of gold was discovered in a necropolis in the south of Spain,
where some eminent ancient had been interred. This find is, however,
an exception. Precious metals do not as a rule appear in the graves
of the period under consideration.
As has been suggested, the Easterners who exploited the wealth of
ancient Iberia kept the natives in ignorance. "This ignorance", Siret
says, "was the guarantee of the prosperity of the commerce carried
on by the strangers.... The first action of the East on the West
was the exploitation for its exclusive and personal profit of the
virgin riches of the latter." These early Westerners had no idea of
the use and value of the metals lying on the surface of their native
land, while the Orientals valued them, were in need of them, and were
anxious to obtain them. As Siret puts it:
"The West was a cow to be milked, a sheep to be fleeced, a
field to be cultivated, a mine to be exploited."
In the traditions preserved by classical writers, there are
references to the skill and cunning of the Phoenicians in commerce,
and in the exploitation of colonies founded among the ignorant
Iberians. They did not inform rival traders where they found metals.
"Formerly", as Strabo says, "the Phoenicians monopolized the trade
from Gades (Cadiz) with the islanders (of the Cassiterides); and
they kept the route a close secret." A vague ancient tradition is
preserved by Pliny, who tells that "tin was first fetched from
Cassiteris (the tin island) by Midacritus".[72] We owe it to the
secretive Phoenicians that the problem of the Cassiterides still
remains a difficult one to solve.
[72] _Nat. Hist._, VII, 56 (57), § 197.
To keep the native people ignorant the Easterners, Siret believes,
forbade the use of metals in their own colonies. A direct result
of this policy was the great development which took place in the
manufacture of the beautiful flint implements already referred to.
These the natives imitated, never dreaming that they were imitating
some forms that had been developed by a people who used copper in
their own country. When, therefore, we pick up beautiful Neolithic
flints, we cannot be too sure that the skill displayed belongs
entirely to the "Stone Age", or that the flints "evolved" from
earlier native forms in those areas in which they are found.
The Easterners do not appear to have extracted the metals from
their ores either in Iberia or in Northern Europe. Tin-stone and
silver-bearing lead were used for ballast for their ships, and they
made anchors of lead. Gold washed from river beds could be easily
packed in small bulk. A people who lived by hunting and fishing were
not likely to be greatly interested in the laborious process of
gold-washing. Nor were they likely to attach to gold a magical and
religious value as did the ancient Egyptians and Sumerians.
So far as can be gathered from the Iberian evidence, the period of
exploitation by the colonists from the East was a somewhat prolonged
one. How many centuries it covered we can only guess. It is of
interest to find, in this connection, however, that something was
known in Mesopotamia before 2000 B.C. regarding the natural riches
of Western Europe. Tablets have recently been found on the site
of Asshur, the ancient capital of Assyria, which was originally a
Sumerian settlement. These make reference to the Empire of Sargon of
Akkad (_c._ 2600 B.C.), which, according to tradition, extended from
the Persian Gulf to the Syrian coast. Sargon was a great conqueror.
"He poured out his glory over the world", declares a tablet found a
good many years ago. It was believed, too, that Sargon embarked on
the Mediterranean and occupied Cyprus. The fresh evidence from the
site of Asshur is to the effect that he conquered Kaptara (? Crete)
and "the Tin Land beyond the Upper Sea" (the Mediterranean). The
explanation may be that he obtained control of the markets to which
the Easterners carried from Spain and the coasts of Northern Europe
the ores, pearls, &c., they had searched for and found. It may
be, therefore, that Britain was visited by Easterners even before
Sargon's time, and that the Glasgow boat with the plug of cork was
manned by dark Orientals who were prospecting the Scottish coast
before the last land movement had ceased--that is, some time after
3000 B.C.
[Illustration: MEGALITHS
Upper: Kit's Coty House, Kent. Lower: Trethevy Stone, Cornwall.]
When the Easterners were expelled from Spain by a people from
Central Europe who used weapons of bronze, some of them appear to
have found refuge in Gaul. Siret is of opinion that others withdrew
from Brittany, where subsidences were taking place along the
coast, leaving their megalithic monuments below high-water mark,
and even under several feet of water as at Morbraz. He thinks that
the settlements of Easterners in Brittany were invaded at one and
the same time by the enemy and the ocean. Other refugees from the
colonies may have settled in Etruria, and founded the Etruscan
civilization. Etruscan menhirs resemble those of the south of France,
while the Etruscan crozier or wand, used in the art of augury,
resembles the croziers of the megaliths, &c., of France, Spain,
and Portugal. There are references in Scottish Gaelic stories
to "magic wands" possessed by "wise women", and by the mothers
of Cyclopean one-eyed giants. Ammianus Marcellinus, quoting
Timagenes,[73] attributes to the Druids the statement that part of the
inhabitants of Gaul were indigenous, but that some had come from the
farthest shores and districts across the Rhine, "having been expelled
from their own lands by frequent wars and the encroachments of the
ocean".
[73] Timagenes (_c._ 85-5 B.C.), an Alexandrian historian,
wrote a history of the Gauls which was made use of by Ammianus
Marcellinus (A.D. fourth century), a Greek of Antioch, and the
author of a history of the Roman Emperors.
The bronze-using peoples who established overland trade routes in
Europe, displacing in some localities the colonies of Easterners and
isolating others, must have instructed the natives of Western Europe
how to mine and use metals. Bronze appears to have been introduced
into Britain by traders. That the ancient Britons did not begin
quite spontaneously to work copper and tin and manufacture bronze
is quite evident, because the earliest specimens of British bronze
which have been found are made of ninety per cent of copper and ten
per cent of tin as on the Continent. "Now, since a knowledge of the
compound", wrote Dr. Robert Munro, "implies a previous acquaintance
with its component elements, it follows that progress in metallurgy
had already reached the stage of knowing the best combination of
these metals for the manufacture of cutting tools before bronze was
practically known in Britain."[74]
[74] _Prehistoric Britain_, p. 145.
The furnaces used were not invented in Britain. Professor Gowland
has shown that in Europe and Asia the system of working mines
and melting metals was identical in ancient times. Summarizing
Professor Gowland's articles in _Archæologia_ and the _Journal of
the Royal Anthropological Institute_, Mr. W. J. Perry writes in this
connection:[75] "The furnaces employed were similar; the crucibles
were of the same material, and generally of the same form; the
process of smelting, first on the surface and then in the crucibles
was found everywhere, even persisting down to present times in the
absence of any fresh cultural influence. The study of the technique
of mining and smelting has served to consolidate the floating
mass of facts which we have accumulated, and to add support for
the contention that one cultural influence is responsible for the
earliest mining and smelting and washing of metals and the getting
of precious stones and metals. The cause of the distribution of the
megalithic culture was the search for certain forms of material
wealth."
[75] _The Relationship between the Geographical Distribution of
Megalithic Monuments and Ancient Mines_, pp. 21 _et seq._
That certain of the megalithic monuments were intimately connected
with the people who attached a religious value to metals is brought
out very forcibly in the references to pagan customs and beliefs
in early Christian Gaelic literature. There are statements in the
Lives of St. Patrick regarding a pagan god called "Cenn Cruach" and
"Crom Cruach" whose stone statue was "adorned with gold and silver,
and surrounded by twelve other statues with bronze ornaments". The
"statue" is called "the king idol of Erin", and it is stated that
"the twelve idols were made of stone, but he ('Crom Cruach') was of
gold". To this god of a stone circle were offered up "the firstlings
of every issue and the chief scions of every clan". Another idol was
called Crom Dubh ("Black Crom"), and his name "is still connected",
O'Curry has written, "with the first Sunday of August in Munster
and Connaught". An Ulster idol was called Crom Chonnaill, which
was either a living animal or a tree, or was "believed to have
been such", O'Curry says. De Jubainville translates _Cenn Cruach_
as "Bloody Head" and _Crom Cruach_ as "Bloody Curb" or "Bloody
Crescent". O'Curry, on the other hand, translates _Crom Cruach_
as "Bloody Maggot" and _Crom Dubh_ as "Black Maggot". In Gaelic
legends "maggots" or "worms" are referred to as forms of supernatural
beings. The maggot which appeared on the flesh of a slain animal was
apparently regarded as a new form assumed by the indestructible
soul, just as in the Egyptian story of Bata the germ of life passes
from his bull form in a drop of blood from which two trees spring
up, and then in a chip from one of the trees from which the man
is restored in his original form.[76] A similar belief, which is
widespread, is that bees have their origin as maggots placed in
trees. One form of the story was taken over by the early Christians,
which tells that Jesus was travelling with Peter and Paul and asked
hospitality from an old woman. The woman refused it and struck Paul
on the head. When the wound putrified maggots were produced. Jesus
took the maggots from the wound and placed them in the hollow of a
tree. When next they passed that way, "Jesus directed Paul to look
in the tree hollow where, to his surprise, he found bees and honey
sprung from his own head".[77] The custom of placing crape on hives
and "telling the bees" when a death takes place, which still survives
in the south of England and in the north of Scotland, appears to be
connected with the ancient belief that the maggot, bee, and tree were
connected with the sacred animal and the sacred stone in which was
the spirit of a deity. Sacred trees and sacred stones were intimately
connected. Tacitus tells us that the Romans invaded Mona (Anglesea),
they destroyed the sacred groves in which the Druids and black-robed
priestesses covered the altars with the blood of captives.[78]
There are a number of dolmens on this island and traces of ancient
mine-workings, indicating that it had been occupied by the early
seafarers who colonized Britain and Ireland and worked metals. A
connection between the tree cult of the Druids and the cult of the
builders of megaliths is thus suggested by Tacitus, as well as by
the Irish evidence regarding the Ulster idol Crom Chonnaill, referred
to above (see also Chapter XII).
[76] A worm crept from the heart of a dead Phoenix, and gave
origin to a new Phoenix.--_Herodotus_, II, 73.
[77] Rendel Harris, _The Ascent of Olympus_, p. 2.
[78] _Annals of Tacitus_, Book XIV, Chapter 29-30.
Who were the people that followed the earliest Easterners and visited
our shores to search like them for metals and erect megalithic
monuments? It is impossible to answer that question with certainty.
There were after the introduction of bronze working, as has been
indicated, intrusions of aliens. These included the introducers of
the short-barrow method of burial and the later introducers of burial
by cremation. It does not follow that all intrusions were those of
conquerors. Traders and artisans may have come with their families in
large numbers and mingled with the earlier peoples. Some intruders
appear to have come by overland routes from southern and central
France and from Central Europe and the Danube valley, while others
came across the sea from Spain. That a regular over-seas trade-route
was in existence is indicated by the references made by classical
writers to the Cassiterides (Tin Islands). Strabo tells that the
natives "bartered tin and hides with merchants for pottery, salt, and
articles of bronze". The Phoenicians, as has been noted, "monopolized
the trade from Gades (Cadiz) with the islanders and kept the route
a close secret". It was probably along this sea-route that Egyptian
blue beads reached Britain. Professor Sayce has identified a number
of these in Devizes Museum, and writes:
"They are met with plentifully in the Early Bronze Age tumuli
of Wiltshire in association with amber beads and barrel-shaped
beads of jet or lignite. Three of them come from Stonehenge
itself. Similar beads of ivory have been found in a Bronze Age
cist near Warminster: if the material is really ivory it must
have been derived from the East. The cylindrical faience beads,
it may be added, have been discovered in Dorsetshire as well as
in Wiltshire."
Professor Sayce emphasizes that these blue beads "belong to one
particular period in Egyptian history, the latter part of the
Eighteenth Dynasty and the earlier part of the Nineteenth Dynasty....
The period to which they belong may be dated 1450-1250 B.C., and as
we must allow some time for their passage across the trade routes
to Wiltshire an approximate date for their presence in the British
barrows will be 1300 B.C."
[Illustration: Beads from Bronze Age Barrows on Salisbury Plain
The large central bead and the small round ones are of amber; the
long plain ones are of jet; and the long segmented or notched
beads are of an opaque blue substance (faience).]
Dr. H. R. Hall, of the British Museum, who discovered, at Deir
el-Bahari in Egypt, "thousands of blue glaze beads of the exact
particular type of those found in Britain", says that they date back
till "about 1500 B.C.". He noted the resemblance before Professor
Sayce had written. "It is gratifying", he comments, "that the
Professor agrees that the Devizes beads are undoubtedly Egyptian, as
an important voice is thereby added to the consensus of opinion on
the subject." Similar beads have been found in the "Middle Bronze Age
in Crete and in Western Europe". Dr. Hall thinks the Egyptian beads
may have reached Britain as early as "about 1400 B.C.".[79] We have
thus provided for us an early date in British history, based on the
well authenticated chronology of the Empire period of Ancient Egypt.
Easterners, or traders in touch with Easterners, reached our shores
carrying Egyptian beads shortly before or early in the fourteenth
century B.C. At this time amber was being imported into the south of
England from the Baltic, while jet was being carried from Whitby in
Yorkshire.
[79] The _Journal of Egyptian Archæology_, Vol. I, part I, pp.
18-19.
After the introduction of bronze working in Western Europe the
natives began to work and use metals. These could not have been
Celts, for in the fourteenth century B.C. the Celts had not yet
reached Western Europe.[80] The earliest searchers for metals who
visited Britain must therefore have been the congeners of those who
erected the megalithic monuments in the metal-yielding areas of Spain
and Portugal and north-western France.
[80] It may be that Celtic chronology will have to be readjusted
in the light of recent discoveries.
It would appear that the early Easterners exploited the virgin riches
of Western Europe for a long period--perhaps for over a thousand
years--and that, after their Spanish colonies were broken up by a
bronze-using people from Central Europe, the knowledge of how to
work metals spread among the natives. Overland trade routes were
then opened up. At first these were controlled in Western Europe by
the Iberians. In time the Celts swept westward and formed with the
natives mixed communities of Celtiberians. The Easterners appear to
have inaugurated a new era in Western European commerce after the
introduction of iron working. They had colonies in the south and
west of Europe and on the North African coast, and obtained supplies
of metals, &c., by sea. They kept the sea-routes secret. British
ores, &c., were carried to Spain and Carthage. After Pytheas visited
Britain (see next chapter) the overland trade-route to Marseilles was
opened up. Supplies of surface tin having become exhausted, tin-mines
were opened in Cornwall. The trade of Britain then came under the
control of Celtiberian and Celtic peoples, who had acquired their
knowledge of shipbuild
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