Ancient Man in Britain

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo. Mansell

EXAMPLES OF LOWER PALÆOLITHIC INDUSTRIES FOUND IN ENGLAND

(British Museum)

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

Lower Palæolithic—

1. Pre-Chellean.

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

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

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

Upper Palæolithic—

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

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

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

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

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

Chellean Coup de Poing or "Hand Axe"

Right-hand view shows sinuous cutting edge.

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

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

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

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

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

WESTERN EUROPE DURING THE THIRD INTER-GLACIAL EPOCH

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER III

The Age of the "Red Man" of Wales

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Upper Palæolithic Implements

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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