Ancient Man in Britain

Donald Alexander Mackenzie

Ancient Man in Britain

FOREWORD

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

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

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

G. Elliot Smith.The University of London.

PREFACE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DONALD A. MACKENZIE.

CHAPTER I

Britons of the Stone Age

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER II

Earliest Traces of Modern Man

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

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

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

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

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

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

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