# Smithsonian Report/1909/Recent discoveries bearing on the antiquity of man in Europe

RECENT DISCOVERIES BEARING ON THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN EUROPE.
[With 18 plates.]
By George Grant MacCurdy, Yale University.
INTRODUCTION.
Every ten years our Government takes a census. This happens to be the year in which it is done. It is also good policy for a science, especially if it is a relatively new one, to take a periodical account of stock. The science of prehistoric anthropology need have no fear of the satisfactory outcome of such a test at this time. I have been asked to be the census taker for the European field, and consider myself fortunate, not only in the field, but also in the period to be covered. Nowhere else has the prehistoric, the whole problem of man's antiquity, been studied with such thoroughness and with such happy results. Of the nearly one hundred years since prehistoric archeologv began to take shape and to grow into what is now becoming a real science, no decade has shown a more satisfactory record than the one just closed. To its achievements the present paper is devoted.
How are we to measure the growth of the decade in question? The correct result requires a knowledge not only of what is now known but also of what was known in 1900. The annual output in the way of publications is one of the best gauges of activity, of the rate of progress in a given subject. Ten years ago the prehistoric output was well provided for in the journals dealing with anthropology in general, in the proceedings of periodical congresses, the transactions of local societies, and occasional special publications. These channels continue to be utilized in increasing ratio, which ordinarily would meet the requirements of a healthy, steady growth. But they have not sufficed. New and more highly specialized journals have sprung into existence, new prehistoric societies and congresses have been organized, and special publications financed. At this moment I do not recall a single purely prehistoric European journal of importance ​dating back to 1900. Of those founded since then, there should be mentioned: L'Homme Préhistorique (Paris), a monthly founded in 1903; La Revue Préhistorique (Paris), a monthly founded in 1906; Praehistorische Zeitschrift (Berlin), founded in 1909; Mannus, Zeitschrift für Vorgeschichte, Organ der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Vorgeschichte (Würzburg), founded in 1909. In December, 1903, the Société Préhistorique de France was founded. It publishes a monthly bulletin; also in 1906 a handbook appeared, Manuel de Recherches Préhistoriques, and since 1905 has held a congress annually, each compte rendu of which forms a large volume of about a thousand pages.
In addition to these new channels, there should be mentioned certain special publications made possible through the generosity of patrons of the science, either private individuals or learned societies. One of these, the joint work of de Villeneuve, Verneau, and Boule, and entitled "Les Grottes de Grimaldi (Baoussé-Roussé)," was due to the initiative of Prince Albert I. of Monaco. The latter is at present promoting a new and important project, which might be styled a paleolithic survey of northern Spain. The work is in charge of a committee consisting of Hermilio Alcalde del Rio, P. Lorenzo Sierra, Abbé Henri Breuil, Abbé Jean Bouyssonie, and Dr. Hugo Obermaier. The report of last summer's campaign is highly gratifying and gives assurance of another publication worthy to rank with that on the caverns of Grimaldi. The Academic des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres has also become a patron of prehistoric archeology, generously supporting from its funds the joint explorations of French caverns by Cartailhac and Breuil.
This much increased literary output presupposes a corresponding activity in the field, the museum, and the study. A record of the explorations in the field alone would far surpass the limits of this paper. The results have been so comprehensive, so cumulative in their effect, that only the alert have been able to keep pace with the progress. It has been a period of intensive study as well as of generalization. The careful scientific exploration of new stations has led to a revision of old data and often the re-exploration of old localities.
A list of the more notable achievements would include such items as Rutot's contributions to our knowledge of a pre-Chellean industry; those of Penck relating to man and the glacial period; the discovery of paleolithic human remains at Krapina, Mauer (near Hei​delberg), Le Moustier, La Chapelle-aux-Saints, Combe-Capelle, Le Pech de l'Azé, and La Ferrassie; the studies of Breuil, Cartailhac, Capitan and others relating to paleolithic mural paintings and engravings; Commont's recent explorations at the classic station of Saint-Acheul; those of Martin and Giraux at La Quina; the researches of Szombathy, Hoernes, and Obermaier in Austria-Hungary, those of R. R. Schmidt and of Wiegers in Germany, and of Bächler in Switzerland. Mention has already been made of the work done in the caverns of Grimaldi and that begun in northern Spain, both under the generous patronage of the Prince of Monaco.
To enumerate all the important stations recently discovered, even of the paleolithic period alone, would require more space than is at my disposal here. There is therefore need of limiting this study chronologically as well as geographically. Excepting the bare mention of quite recent paleolithic discoveries by S. J. Czarnowski in the caverns of Russian Poland, the countries to be included are France and Belgium in the center, with Switzerland and parts of Germany and Austria-Hungary on the east, and Spain to the south. We shall not even cross the channel, as we might well do, for paleolithically England has much in common with France and Belgium, and English students of the period in question have by no means been idle of late.
The time element must also be reduced. The original table of relative chronology provided for an age of stone, of bronze, and of iron. For the present let us ignore the last two. This leaves the stone age, at first applied to the neolithic only, then divided into paleolithic and neolithic, and finally into eolithic, paleolithic, and neolithic. It is a case of the first being last and the last first in more senses than one, for during the past decade there have developed what may well be styled an eolithic school as well as a paleolithic school. Students of the neolithic on the other hand, while particularly active, must still await a more favorable moment for correlation, for crystallization of data. By common consent, then, we shall eliminate the neolithic from the present discussion, with only a passing reference to its place and divisions in the table of relative chronology.
As for the eolithic school, I endeavored five years ago to sum up its work in a paper entitled "The Eolithic Problem." Since then investigations have been carried on almost continuously. Attempts were made to explain away the origin of eoliths by the invocation of flint mills as factories for their wholesale production, but such ​attempts seem to have ended in failure. This subject was discussed in my vice-presidential address before section H of the AmericanAssociation for the Advancement of Science at the New York meeting in 1906. The recent discoveries of eoliths on the plateau of Hautes-Fagnes and at Boncelles, near Liège, by de Munck and Rutot, have an important bearing on this whole subject. At Boncelles eoliths are said to be found in undisturbed middle Oligocene deposits, which is the lowest horizon yet recorded for them.
The fact that the Tasmanians when they became extinct in 1876 were still in a culture stage corresponding to the eolithic has done much to strengthen the thesis of that school. In this connection should be mentioned the discovery by Franz de Zeltner in Haute Senegal of a quite recent industry with eolithic facies. Rutot also finds in Belgium that a neolithic epoch, to which he has given the name "Flénusian," is characterized by a similar industry.
But eoliths were introduced here only to be retired from the stage in order that more space might be given to the doings of the paleolithic school. I can not dismiss them, however, without first referring to Verworn's rule of the one-sided marginal working of a flake or chip. No single character is a sufficient basis for declaring that a given stone object is or is not an artifact. Each specimen should be subjected to a systematic diagnosis, as is a case of fever, for example, by a physician, says Verworn. In observing a number of paleolithic or neolithic scrapers that are made from flakes which are retouched on one side only, one finds that the direction from which the retouching took place is almost always oriented in the same manner with respect to the sides of the flake. If one calls the under or bulb side of the flake the front and the outer side the back, one sees that the blows or the pressure which produced the marginal working was executed almost always from the front toward the back, that the tiny scars left by the chipping begin at the margin and extend over the back. The chipping is therefore visible only from the back; only in rare cases does one find the opposite orientation of the chipping.
What is the meaning of this? There is too much method in it to be the result of chance. There is even more than mere method. By following the rule as expressed in figure 1a–c, we arrive at a tool that is utilizable. The edge produced by the chipping is straight, as seen in figure 1 c. On the other hand, if the opposite method of chipping is followed we arrive at a meandering irregular edge-line that is good for nothing from a practical standpoint (fig. 2 c). In rare instances the back of the flake may be more regular than the front. ​In that case the chipping is done from the back toward the front, as one might expect; a fact which strengthens the theory that the chip- ping is intentional and not accidental.
Professor Verworn made a tabulation to show the percentage of specimens that follow the rule and of those that do not. He chose two series universally recognized as artifacts, comparing them with each other, and later with a series of eoliths from Puy-de-Boudieu (Cantal). His results follow:
| Locality. | Total number of pieces examined. | Number that follow the rule. | Number opposed to the rule. |
| | | Per cent. | Per cent. |
| Vézère Valley (Dordogne) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 686 | 654=95.3 | 32=4.7 |
| Tasmania . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 92 | 88=95.7 | 34=4.3 |
| Puy-de-Boudieu (Cantal) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 121 | 115=95 | 6=5 |
Before definitely lopping off the first and third divisions of the stone age, it would be well to note their position and relative weight in the chronological scale. A table of classification in harmony with the teachings of both Rutot and Penck is reproduced in plate 1. It will be seen that the eolithic probably begins with the middle Oligocene, reappears in the Miocene and Pliocene, and is carried up through the lower Quaternary. The paleolithic, once considered as commensurate with the whole of the Quaternary, is now limited to its middle and upper horizons. The neolithic is confined to post-Quaternary times.
The contributions to our knowledge of the paleolithic during the decade in question may for convenience be grouped under three heads: (1) Those relating to finds in valley deposits; (2) cavern explorations, and (3) the discoveries of human skeletal remains. As examples of the first group, I have chosen the researches of Commont at Saint-Acheul (France) and of Szombathy, Hoernes, and Obermaier at Willendorf (Austria-Hungary).
VALLEY DEPOSITS.
The housing and transporting required by modern civilization have led to the discovery of the culture levels attained by our paleolithic forebears. At Saint-Acheul the deposits of the Somme Valley have been exploited since 1771 at least. They yield not only material for building purposes, but also sand for foundries and flint for road metal. The first discovery of a paleolithic industry at Saint-Acheul was made by Doctor Rigollot in 1854, following on and inspired by Boucher de Perthes's discoveries at Abbeville. Then came Gaudry, Prestwich, and Evans, all now dead. Explorations at Saint-Acheul have been carried on for the past twenty-five years by d'Acy. The most active investigator on the ground at present is V. Commont, whose systematic work there covers a period of nearly ten years.
| | Geological periods. | Geological periods. | Glacial and interglacial epochs. | Fauna. | Human remains. | Cultural epochs. | Type stations. | |
| | Recent. | Recent. | Postglacial. | Existing fauna. | Neolithic races. | Omalian. | Omal, Belgium. | Neolithic. |
| | Recent. | Recent. | Postglacial. | Existing fauna. | Neolithic races. | Robenhausian. | Robenhausen, Switzerland. | Neolithic. |
| | Recent. | Recent. | Postglacial. | Existing fauna. | Neolithic races. | Campignian. | Le Campigny (Seine-Inférieure). | Neolithic. |
| | Recent. | Recent. | Postglacial. | Existing fauna. | Neolithic races. | Flénusian. | Flénu, Belgium. | Neolithic. |
| | Recent. | Recent. | Postglacial. | Existing fauna. | Neolithic races. | Tardenoisian. | Fère-en-Tardenois (Aisne). | Neolithic. |
| | Recent. | Recent. | Postglacial. | Existing fauna. | Ofnet. | Asylian (transition). | Mas d'Azil (Ariège). | Neolithic. |
| Quaternary. | Upper. | Flandrian (loess). | Daun Stage. | Reindeer. | Cro-Magnon, Grimaldi. | Upper Magdalenian. | La Madeleine (Dordogne). | Upper Paleolithic. |
| Quaternary. | Upper. | Flandrian (loess). | Gschnitz Stage. | Reindeer. | Cro-Magnon, Grimaldi. | Middle Magdalenian. | La Madeleine (Dordogne). | Upper Paleolithic. |
| Quaternary. | Upper. | Flandrian (loess). | Bühl Stage. | Reindeer. | Cro-Magnon, Grimaldi. | Lower Magdalenian. | La Madeleine (Dordogne). | Upper Paleolithic. |
| Quaternary. | Upper. | Flandrian (loess). | | Bison. | Placard. | Upper Solutréan. | Solutré (Saône-et-Loire). | Upper Paleolithic. |
| Quaternary. | Upper. | Flandrian (loess). | | | Grimaldi (Negroid). | Lower Solutréan. | Solutré (Saône-et-Loire). | Upper Paleolithic. |
| Quaternary. | Upper. | Flandrian (loess). | | Equus caballus. | Combe-Capelle, La Chapelle-aux-Saints, Krapina, Spy, Neandertal, La Ferrassie, Homo mousteriensis. | Upper Aurignacian. | Aurignac (Haute-Garonne). | Upper Paleolithic. |
| Quaternary. | Upper. | Brabantian (loess). | Würm glacial (Wisconsin). | | Combe-Capelle, La Chapelle-aux-Saints, Krapina, Spy, Neandertal, La Ferrassie, Homo mousteriensis. | Middle Aurignacian. | Aurignac (Haute-Garonne). | Upper Paleolithic. |
| Quaternary. | Upper. | Brabantian (loess). | Würm glacial (Wisconsin). | | Combe-Capelle, La Chapelle-aux-Saints, Krapina, Spy, Neandertal, La Ferrassie, Homo mousteriensis. | Lower Aurignacian. | Aurignac (Haute-Garonne). | Upper Paleolithic. |
| Quaternary. | Upper. | Brabantian (loess). | Riss-Würm interglacial. | Ursus spelaeus. | Combe-Capelle, La Chapelle-aux-Saints, Krapina, Spy, Neandertal, La Ferrassie, Homo mousteriensis. | Upper Mousterian. | Le Moustier (Dordogne). | Upper Paleolithic. |
| Quaternary. | Middle. | Hesbayan (Sand loess). | Riss-Würm interglacial. | Elephas primigenius. | Combe-Capelle, La Chapelle-aux-Saints, Krapina, Spy, Neandertal, La Ferrassie, Homo mousteriensis. | Middle Mousterian. | Le Moustier (Dordogne). | Upper Paleolithic. |
| Quaternary. | Middle. | Hesbayan (Sand loess). | Riss-Würm interglacial. | Elephas primigenius. | Combe-Capelle, La Chapelle-aux-Saints, Krapina, Spy, Neandertal, La Ferrassie, Homo mousteriensis. | Lower Mousterian. | Le Moustier (Dordogne). | Upper Paleolithic. |
| Quaternary. | Middle. | Campinian (Old Diluvium). | Riss glacial (Illinoisan). | | Bury Saint-Edmunds. | Upper Acheulian. | Saint-Acheul (Somme). | Lower Paleolithic. |
| Quaternary. | Middle. | Campinian (Old Diluvium). | Riss glacial (Illinoisan). | Rhinoceros tichorhinus. | | Lower Acheulian. | Saint-Acheul (Somme). | Lower Paleolithic. |
| Quaternary. | Middle. | Campinian (Old Diluvium). | Riss glacial (Illinoisan). | Rhinoceros tichorhinus. | | Chellean. | Chelles (Seine-et-Marne). | Lower Paleolithic. |
| Quaternary. | Middle. | Campinian (Old Diluvium). | Mindel-Riss interglacial. | Rhinoceros merckii. | | Strépyan. | Strépy, Belgium. | Lower Paleolithic. |
| Quaternary. | Lower. | Mosean (Old Diluvium). | Mindel-Riss interglacial. | Elephas antiquus. | | Mesvinian. | Mesvin, Belgium. | Eolithic. |
| Quaternary. | Lower. | Mosean (Old Diluvium). | Mindel glacial (Kansan). | | Homo heidelbergensis. | Mafflean. | Maffle, Belgium. | Eolithic. |
| Quaternary. | Lower. | Mosean (Old Diluvium). | Mindel glacial (Kansan). | | | Reutelian. | Reutel, Belgium. | Eolithic. |
| Tertiary. | Pliocene. | Upper. | Günz-Mindel interglacial. | Elephas meridionalis. | | Saint-Prestian. | Saint-Prest (Eure-et-Loir). | Eolithic. |
| Tertiary. | Pliocene. | Middle. | Günz glacial (Pre-Kansan). | | | Kentian. | Kent, England. | Eolithic. |
| Tertiary. | Pliocene. | Lower. | | | | Kentian. | Kent, England. | Eolithic. |
| Tertiary. | Miocene. | Upper. | | Hipparion, Dinotherium. | | Cantalian. | Puy-Courny (Cantal). | Eolithic. |
| Tertiary. | Miocene. | Middle. | | | | | | Eolithic. |
| Tertiary. | Miocene. | Lower. | | | | | | Eolithic. |
| Tertiary. | Oligocene. | Upper. | | | | | | Eolithic. |
| Tertiary. | Oligocene. | Middle. | | | | Fagnian (doubtful). | Hautes-Fagnes, Belgium. | Eolithic. |
| Tertiary. | Oligocene. | Lower. | | | | | | Eolithic. |
| Relative Chronology of the Stone Age. |||||||||
In the workshop near the base of the Tellier gravel-pit, Commont found (1) many flint nodules prepared for chipping (débitage) and showing traces of the beginning of chipping, (2) a quantity of flint cores (nuclei) of all dimensions, (3) hammerstones of various forms, for the most part only slightly used, (4) 5,000 flint chips, (5) large flakes prepared for the production of special types of implements, (6) small implements derived from the large flakes, and (7) large implements of various forms, some only partly finished or broken in the process of manufacture. The patina of the flints of this workshop is a white mat, different from that of the Acheulian above. At the top of the same deposit that covered the workshop, Commont found a series of implements without patina, made of black (flint) or grey flint, that looked as fresh as if they had been made yesterday. The fauna of this deposit includes Elephas antiquus, large horse, Bos.
Section of the Tellier quarry: (1) Lower sands and gravels, rude industry, eolithic and Strépyan facies; (2) red sands, paleolithic workshop showing transition from Chellean to Acheulian I; (3) upper part of limon rouge (red clay), Acheulian II with white patina; (4) thin layer of white sands (base of ergeron) replacing the usual flinty layer (cailloutis), Mousterian industry, and small Acheulian implements with bluish patina; (5) lower part of brick earth, Magdalenian industry; (6) at the top of the brick earth, neolithic.
The deposits of the Tellier pit are 10 meters thick, their base being about 44 meters above sea level. The section is the most complete and instructive one at Saint-Acheul, especially in respect to the upper layers, in these even surpassing the famous section at the exploitation Helin, near Spiennes, Belgium. In fact, each section not only confirms, but also supplements the story told by the other. In each, all the Quaternary epochs except the Brabantian are represented. A section of one will suffice therefore for both. I have chosen for illustration (fig. 3) the exploitation Helin explored by Rutot in 1902. In the Helin section the lower Quaternary is represented by two distinct eolithic horizons—the Mafflean and Mesvinian. Above these come the paleolithic horizons in regular order— ​Strépyan, Chellean, and Achuelian I. But the deposits in which one might expect to find the Moustcrian, Aurignacian, Solutréan, and Magdalenian are either sterile or absent. In the Tellier section at Saint-Achuel, we find not only the eolithic, Strépyan, Chellean, and Acheulian I industries in regular section, but also Acheulian II, Mousterian, and Magdalenian in stratigraphic position, the only industries absent being the Aurignacian and Solutréan.
| | Flinty layer (cailloutis) with Neolithic industry. |
| | Flinty layer without industry. |
| | Flinty layer with lower Acheulian industry. |
| | Flinty layer with Chellean industry. |
| | Flinty layer with transition from Eolithic to Paleolithic (Strépyan industry). |
| | Flinty layer with Mesvinian industry. |
| | Flinty layer with Mafflean industry. |
| Fig. 3.—Section of the Exploitation Helin, near Spiennes, showing the superposition of the Quaternary deposits and industrial horizons; lower terrace of the valley of the Trouille (after Rutot). ||
Fortunately for the science, other valley deposits supply the industries that are missing from Helin and Saint-Acheul. Among the paleolithic stations of lower Austria, those situated in the loess at Willendorf, left bank of the Danube, about 20 kilometers above Krems, are exceedingly productive. Until 1908 only two stations were known, the Grossenstein brick works to the south and the Ebner brick works north of the village. Recently the opening of a railroad from Krems to Grein uncovered seven more stations in the vicinity of Willendorf. One of these is near the Grossenstein brick works; a second, explored in 1908 by Drs. H. Obermaier and J. Bayer, seems to be the continuation of the Ebner station. This second station is at present the most important of all. Here nine superimposed culture layers were determined. The loess deposits at this station are about 18 to 20 meters thick.
The culture horizons are situated from 2 to 8 meters below the surface. They are recognized by a brownish color and the presence of charcoal as opposed to the light yellow color of the rest of the loess. ​Each layer varies in thickness from 10 centimeters to 30 or 40 centimeters. In section the thicker parts appear like nests and are marked by the presence of hearths. About these hearths are found bones and stone implements in large numbers. These artifacts and bones are not confined to the culture layers only, but here and there occur in the alternating layers. Seven meters below the lowest culture layer, and about 3 meters above loess bottom, there were found a hornstone chip with traces of utilization (possibly an eolith) and a fragment of bone.
The lowest (first) culture-bearing layer is characterized by a very crude industry made of materials not utilized in the upper layers. Charcoal and a few bone fragments also occur. Fauna: Reindeer and bison.
Second layer: Varieties of quartz and jasper; also Danube River stone used as hammer-stones, a poor quality of flint, and incomplete examples of the lower Aurignacian type. Fauna: Reindeer, bison, wolf.
Third layer: Industry similar to that of second layer in respect to forms as well as the kinds of materials used, and characterized by the appearance of the keel-shaped scraper.
Fourth layer: Abundance of small keel-shaped scrapers, whitish-gray patinated hornstone; bone points, both blunt and sharp; a stag antler with end hollowed out for insertion of a stone implement. Fauna: Mammoth, reindeer, stag.
Fifth layer: Rich in well-fashioned hornstone implements. Especially noteworthy are the hornstone points (à tranchant rabattu). Fauna: Mammoth, reindeer, stag.
Sixth, seventh, and eighth layers: Hornstone points (à tranchant rabattu). In the seventh layer an Aurignacian bone point with cleft base. Appearance of the forerunners of the Solutréan laurel-leaf point, pieces of reindeer horn that served as haftings for stone implements. Fauna: Mammoth, horse, reindeer, cave lion, wolf.
Ninth layer: Rich and beautiful stone industry of the upper Aurignacian types. Points with lateral notch at the base. The most important piece of all was a female statuette of stone—the so-called Venus of Willendorf (pl. 2, fig. a). The piece was found in the yellow loess 25 centimeters below a charcoal stratum belonging to the ninth layer and near a hearth of this layer. Szombathy, Bayer, and Obermaier were all present when the discovery was made. The figure is 11 centimeters high and complete in every respect. It is carved from fine porous oölitic limestone. Some of the red color with which it was painted still adheres to it. It represents a fat pregnant woman with large pendent mammæ and large hips, but no real steatopygy. It corresponds closely in form to the Venus of Brassempouy, an ivory figurine of Aurignacian age from the grotte du ​Pape (Landes). The hair is kinky (negroid), the face left unchiseled. The arms are much reduced, the lower arms and hands being represented only in slight relief. The knees are well formed, but below the knees the legs are much shortened, although provided with calves. The entire figurine is proof that the artist was a master at representing the human form and that here he intended to emphasize those parts most closely associated with fecundity. The only suggestion of apparel or ornament is a bracelet on each wrist. The fauna of this horizon includes the mammoth, horse, reindeer, stag, and fox. All nine layers are Aurignacian, with a transition to Solutréan at the top. It was my good fortune to be in Vienna the week the Venus of Willendorf arrived, and, after the museum staff, to be the first archeologist to examine the specimen.
In addition to the Venus of Brassempouy (pl. 2, fig. b), the Piette collection includes other female figurines in the same style and from a corresponding horizon. One of these, also from the grotte du Pape, is said to have served as a poinard handle (pl. 3, fig. a). The blade formed by the prolongation of the back is broken. Presumably the figure never had been supplied with head and arms. Another example, found in the cavern of Mas-d'Azil (Ariège), is a female bust carved from the incisor of a horse (pl. 3, fig. b). This piece is of special importance because of the chiseling of the features, which were lacking in the headless specimens from Brassempouy and also are not differentiated in the Venus of Willendorf. Piette would place in this or an intermediate group the bas relief from Laugerie-Basse, carved on a reindeer palm and representing a human female near the feet of a reindeer (pl. 2, fig. c). The skin being almost completely hidden beneath a hairy coating indicated by incised lines, there was no need of apparel. Ornaments, however, are not lacking. Besides bracelets recalling those worn by the Venus of Willendorf, there is a necklace. Curiously enough, in the same Aurignacian layer at Brassempouy that furnished the adipose type with pendent breasts were found figurines belonging to a distinctly different class, representing a slender, probably superior race. The best single example of this class is the femme à la capuche (pl. 4). The long slender neck calls for a body and legs to match, and these are seen in other figures from the same horizon.
The discovery by Prof. Otto Schoetensack of a human lower jaw in the lower Quaternary sands at Mauer, near Heidelberg, rightly comes in the category of valley deposit finds. We have chosen, however, to reserve it for the general discussion of human remains.
A combination of the three stations—Helin, Saint-Acheul and Willendorf—not only gives us every paleolithic horizon, the transitional Tourassian or Asylian alone excepted, in stratigraphic position, but also determines their position with respect to the eolithic below ​
* Fig. a. Venus of Willendorf. 2/3. After Szombathy, Korresp.-Bl, 40, p. 87, 1909. Fig. b. Venus of Brassempouy. 1/1. After Piette, L'anthr., 6, pl. 1, 1895. Fig. c. Woman and Reindeer from Laugerie-Basse, L'anthr., 6, pl. 5, 1895. |
a
b
Fig. a. Female Torso, from Brassempouy.1/1. Fig. b. Female Bust, from Mas d'Azil. 1/1. After Piette, L'anthr., 6, pl. 4, 1895.
Hooded Female Figurine (Figurine a la Capuche), from Brassempouy. Enlarged. After Piette, L'anthr., 6, pl. 6, 1895.
CAVERNS AND ROCK-SHELTERS.
Turning to the paleolithic caverns and rock-shelters, we find confirmatory evidence, although there is no direct stratigraphic relation between the superimposed cavern deposits and those of the river valleys. The chasm, we believe, is safely bridged, however, by the combined evidence of faunal and industrial remains. The results accumulated in the past decade of cavern exploration have been even more remarkable than those due to the investigation of valley sites. Like the researches of Commont at Saint-Acheul, much time has been given by cavern explorers to regions and even stations already well known. As examples there may be cited the caverns of Grimaldi, Le Moustier (Dordogne), and Altamira, Spain.
Rock-shelters and caves seem to have been employed as habitations before the close of the Acheulian epoch and continued to be so used thereafter throughout the paleolithic. A study of their floor deposits reveals a succession of culture levels corresponding to those found in valley deposits and classed as upper paleolithic.
The rock-shelter of La Quina (Charente), already mentioned, deserves more than a passing notice. Known since 1872 and often visited by archeologists bent on increasing their collections, La Quina came into the possession of Dr. Henri Martin in 1905, since which time he, with the help of friends, including M. Louis Giraux, has carried on excavations that have led to important results.
Beginning at the bottom the section is composed of the following: (1) Alluvial sands deposited by the Voultron, a tributary of the Gironde, at the summit of which are found certain elements of an industry with Acheulian facies; (2) two clay deposits, the lower sandy and of a greenish tint, the upper dark. The contact between these is the so-called couche à ossements utilisés, which is also rich in a pure Mousterian stone industry; (3) a barren layer formed by debris from the one-time overhanging cliff; (4) vegetal earth.
Particular attention is called to the utilized bones, a subject treated in part 1 of a quarto memoir in preparation by Doctor Martin. The traces of utilization are bunched incisions usually nearly transverse to the long axis of the bone. The bones and parts of bone thus marked belong to five categories: (1) The lower extremity of the humerus of the horse and certain bovidæ; (2) the first phalanx of ​the horse; (3) first phalanges of the bison and other ruminants; (4) metacarpals and metatarsals of the horse and reindeer; (5) fragments of the shafts of long bones. In some cases the bone resembles a veritable miniature chopping block. In every instance it would offer a solid support for an object to be cut, scraped, or chipped, as the case might be.
Similar incisions could have been produced by pressing a flint chip or flake against a fresh bone at the proper angle to produce the marginal chipping so characteristic of the stone industry at the station in question, as has been noted by M. A. de Mortillet. Since Martin's discovery at La Quina, bones utilized in similar fashion have been found by Favraud at Petit-Puymoyen, and Pont-Neuf (Charente), also by Dr. Eugène Pittard at the Mousterian station of Rebières (Dordogne). Petit-Puymoyen is of Mousterian age, while Pont-Neuf is Aurignacian.
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The rehabilitation of the Aurignacian epoch and the determination of its stratigraphic position between the Mousterian and Solutréan instead of between the Solutréan and Magdalenian, where it had been placed for a brief period by G. de Mortillet, is one of the special recent contributions to the credit of cavern explorers, Cartailhac and Breuil suggesting that the old name be revived. Once and for a long period rejected by the builders it has suddenly become one of the chief corner stones in the temple of classification. Its ​presence is reported from many localities both in loess deposits and in caverns.
Aurignacian industry is characterized by blade-like flint flakes with one end chipped obliquely and the back worked down (rabattu) for its entire length; flakes chipped along both margins and producing in some instances hour-glass forms; the appearance of two types of bone implements, (1) scrapers terminating in an oblique edge and (2) points with cleft base; the beginnings of sculpture, engraving, and painting, and, according to Rutot at least, the dawn of ceramic art. In respect to fauna, this is the epoch in which the reindeer first becomes prominent. The cave bear, horse (abundant), hyena, and mammoth are also well represented. The direct superposition of the Aurignacian on the Mousterian is seen to good advantage in the caverns of Grimaldi, at Pair-non-Pair (Gironde), Spy (Belgium), Chatelperron (Allier), La Quina (Charente), and Les Cottés (Vienne). On the other hand, the superposition of the Solutrean on the Aurignacian has been noted at a number of stations including: Cro-Magnon, Combe-Capelle, Le Ruth and Laussel (Dordogne), Solutré (Saône-et-Loire), Lacoste II near Brive (Corrèze), grotte du roc, commune of Sers (Charente), Sirgenstein (Württemberg), Ofnet (Bavaria), and Carmago and Hornos de la Peña, both in the Province of Santander, Spain.
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By reason of its bearing on the relation between cavern culture and the glacial period, one of the most important paleolithic discoveries ​in recent years is that made by Herr Emil Bachler, director of the Natural History Museum in St. Gallen, Switzerland. The Alpine region had not been considered seriously as a field for paleolithic research, since the latter period closed before the retreat of the glaciers to anything like their present extent. It is true, man might have penetrated into the Alps during an interglacial period, but the evidences of his presence would have been destroyed by the succeeding glaciation. Two stations in Switzerland of the Magdalenian epoch have been known for years, viz., Schweizersbild and Kessierloch, but these are north of the Rhine in Canton Schaffhausen.
It remained for Herr Bächler to make the discovery, some four years ago, of a station of late Mousterian age; not in a valley, or even the foot-hills, but in the Säntis Mountains, which lie between the lakes of Constance and Zurich.
The station in question is on the Ebenalp (above Appenzell) at a height of 1,477 to 1,500 meters. It consists of two caverns, with southeastern exposure, that enter the precipitous face of the rock, and one of which penetrates backward and upward, giving access to the top of the mountain as well as to the Weissbach valley lying to the northwest. The caverns are reached by foot-path from Weissbad, the most frequented one being by way of the gap that separates the Bommenalp from the Ebenalp. This gap was produced by faulting which left the Ebenalp standing about 300 meters above its neighbor. The last part of the way is very steep but protected by a railing. It would, in fact, be absolutely broken at one point were it not for a wooden bridge anchored to the vertical face of the rock. This is at a point just below the first or lower cavern. It is probable, therefore, that paleolithic man did not reach the caverns from this side, but rather from the back of the mountain and by way of the upper cavern. The communication between the two is by means of a narrow ledge. (See pl. 8, fig. a.)
These caverns have been known since 1621, and there is a legend to the effect that at a much earlier date they were inhabited by wild men. The little pilgrimage chapel of Wildkirchli that gives its name to the place was founded by Dr. Paulus Ulmann (1613–1680), priest at Appenzell. The chapel is in the lower cavern, and in the upper cavern where the hermit house once stood there is now the Wildkirchli Inn. The last hermit died in 1851, since which time Wildkirchli has been rather a belvedere for mountain climbers than a place of religious pilgrimage. The views are certainly superb and well repay the toilsome ascent. A place so full of the spirit of the past and of natural charms could not well escape the romancer, as witness the last chapters of the historical novel, Ekkehard, by the celebrated German writer, Viktor von Scheffel.
​As early as 1861 Rütimeyer announced the presence of bones of Ursus spelæus and Capra (ibex and rupicapra) in the floor deposits of Wildkirchli. Before that date the hermits used to pick up bones of the cave bear and sell them to the pilgrims. Bächler began his researches which led to the discovery of a pure Mousterian industry during the winter of 1903–4, and continued them during the two following winters. Winter is the best time to work, as the caverns are then dry, relatively warm, and free from visitors.
The deposits are about 5 meters thick and cover an area of several hundred square meters, so that the amount still to be excavated is much greater than that already done. About 99 per cent of the bones found are of the cave bear, the number of individuals represented by the finds to date being approximately 200. These remains have been found practically at all levels save in the layer at the top, which has a thickness of one-half meter. Mousterian implements are found in the same horizons as the faunal remains. They are made of quartzite and flint ; also of cave-bear bone. The quartzites were picked up in the Weissbach Valley several hundred meters below and carried to the caverns, there to be worked into tools. Some of the better-formed implements are made of a greenish flint that must have been brought a long distance by paleolithic man. Both stone and bone implements are of crude workmanship.
In company with Herr Bächler I spent some hours studying the sections and searching for animal remains and artifacts. We were successful in finding two bone implements and one chipped quartzite. Teeth and fragments of bones were counted by the dozen. These were chiefly of the cave bear. Remains of the cave lion, the cave panther, badger, marten (Mustela martes), ibex, chamois, stag, marmot, otter, and hermit crow have been noted.
The deposits are not indurated and may be worked with as much rapidity as is consistent with careful observation. They consist of materials that have fallen from the ceilings. They can not be called stratified, and yet more or less definite horizons may be distinguished on account of the relative fineness of the deposits and the variations in color.
What is the age of the industry-bearing deposits of Wildkirchli? In order to arrive at a just estimate one must have a knowledge not only of prehistoric times, but also of the ice age. According to Penck there were four glacial epochs (with alternating interglacial epochs). These have been named after four streams of southern Germany in the foothills of the Alps—Günz, Mindel, Riss, and Würm glacial epochs, respectively, beginning with the oldest. Penck ​has gone even further and determined three well-defined stages in the final retreat of the Würm glaciation. The stages correspond to temporary advances during the period of retreat. Such stages have left their traces so distinctly in the region about Innsbruck that local names have been applied to them—Bühl, from Kirchbühl, at an elevation of 500 meters; Gschnitz at 1.200 meters; and Daun at 1,600 meters, the latter, of course, being the most recent.
The barbaric races with which the Romans had to contend had a knowledge of iron. It is estimated that the bronze age had its beginning some 3,500 years ago. The Alps were then either in- habited or visited throughout their extent by man. We find, for example, bronze weapons in the Flüela pass of the upper Engadine. The Flüela pass was invaded by ice of the Daun stage. The latter, therefore, antedates the bronze age. Prehistoric copper mines have been discovered at two localities in the Austrian Alps. One of these lies at the southern foot of the Übergossene Alp, near Salzburg, at a height of 1,500 meters. Neolithic implements were found in the old shafts. Now this locality (Mitterberg) is near the timber line, and a slight depression of this would render it difficult to establish smelters there. The other copper mine is southeast of Kitzbühel in the Tyrol, at a height of 1,900 meters. This mine also must have been occupied later than the Daun stage, at which time the region lay very near the snow line and was uninhabitable.
Even the whole neolithic period in Switzerland is younger than the Daun stage, whose snow-line lay 300 meters lower than to-day. The minimum time, therefore, that separates us from the Daun stage must be at least 7,000 years.
A very long interval of time separates us from the closing epoch (Magdalenian) of the paleolithic period. For we find on the borders of Lakes Constance and Geneva animal remains of the Magdalenian epoch in terraces that are 20 to 30 meters above the present level of these lakes. Magdalenian industry is found in Switzerland well within the area covered by the Würm glaciation. But such stations have not yet been found within that covered by the Bühl stage. It may be taken for granted, therefore, that the Magdalenian industry is not older than, but may be contemporaneous with, the Bühl stage, which corresponds, by the way, to the Champlain stage in North America.
The rock-shelter of Schweizersbild was occupied by paleolithic man after the Würm glaciation had retreated across the Rhine from Canton Schaffhausen. Here 25.000 stone implements have been found by Nüesch; also many bone implements and some engravings, one being of the mammoth. The paleolithic layers were covered in turn by successive deposits belonging to the neolithic bronze and Roman periods. Taking the thickness of the deposit left since Roman times ​as representing 2,000 years, the time required for the whole series of deposits is estimated at 24,000 years. The total time elapsed since the maximum advance of the Würm glaciation is still longer, 30,000 years being none too high an estimate for it.
When could Wildkirchli have been inhabited? It lies within the region of glaciation. It could not have been occupied during the Würm glacial period, because it is at a height of 1,500 meters, while the snow line of the Würm glaciation was only 1,200 meters. It is self-evident that man could not have taken up his abode above the snow line. Even during the Bühl stage of the glacial retreat the snow line was still as low as 1,500 meters. Man could have come there only after the Bühl stage. But after the Bühl stage we have a different fauna and flora; so that man must have inhabited Wildkirchli before the last (Würm) glacial epoch, that is to say during an interglacial (Riss-Würm) epoch with climatic conditions similar to those of the present day.
During the last glacial epoch the Wildkirchli caverns were filled with ice or snow, and hence no deposits of any kind were formed. The sterile layer one-half meter thick at the top of the floor deposits represents the accumulation since the close of the glacial period. If we allow 30,000 years for post-Würmian times we must allow as much more for the last glacial epoch. Thus to reach the Riss-Würm interglacial period and man's occupancy of Wildkirchli caverns would mean going back about 100,000 years. We have here an atypic late Mousterian, or perhaps lower Aurignacian, industry.
An interesting feature in the development of our knowledge of cavern life is that pertaining to paleolithic mural decorations. These were first discovered in the cavern of Altamira, province of Santander, Spain, explored in 1879 by Sautuola. They were, however, not accepted as authentic. About ten years later Léopold Chiron reported mural decorations in the cavern of Chabot (Gard), but the discovery was received with the same skepticism as that which befell the earlier announcement of Sautuola. With the discovery by Émile Rivière, in 1895, of wall engravings in the cavern of La Mouthe (Dordogne), the tide was finally turned in favor of their authenticity. Thereupon other caverns were searched and revealed similar phenomena. In 1906 Francois Daleau announced the discovery of wall engravings at Pair-non-Pair (Gironde), and the following year Félix Regnault found frescoes on the cavern walls of Marsoulas (Haute-Garonne). Since 1900 discoveries of this class are to be numbered by the dozen, and the literature has been enriched by more detailed accounts of the cavern decorations discovered prior to the date in question.
The cavern of Altamira, situated near Santillana, is a series of grand halls united by corridors. The entry is modern, being formed ​in consequence of a cave-in. The vestibule leads to a very large hall divided into two chambers by a mass of fallen rock. The chamber to the left is 40 by 10 meters. The one on the right leads to the series of halls and corridors. At the close of the Quaternary a cave-in at the entrance had effectually sealed the cavern. The fauna is that of the cave bear.
The paintings and engravings are found in all parts of the cavern, especially in the first chamber to the left after entering. The beauty, size, and degree of preservation of these works of art are admirable. Some of the engravings are deeply cut; others are gently incised by the aid of a sharp point. The greater part of these decorations, however, were executed in color, either black or red or both. The most remarkable are those in polychrome of the left chamber near the entrance. While some of the decorations represent animal figures, others are incomprehensible signs and symbols. They do not all date from the same epoch. The deeply-cut figures of the left chamber recall those of Chabot, Pair-non-Pair, and La Grèze. Mural art at Altamira admits of grouping under four categories: (1) Deeply incised engravings and line drawings (dessins au trait) in black; (2) black or red figures; (3) fine engravings, and (4) polychrome frescoes.
Line-drawings and figures in black are abundant along the corridors. The ceiling of the left chamber has many traces of black line-drawings (pl. 5, fig. a) generally in bad state of preservation. Some of the figures in black are shaded in (modelés) , and in this respect are quite equal to the polychrome figures.
The second layer of paintings includes the black or red frescoes which are seldom combined in the same figure with engravings.
Fine engravings are numerous and often made over the black line-drawings, that is to say, were more recently executed.
In 1903, Juan Cabré noticed for the first time animal figures painted on walls of a rock-shelter at Cretas, south of Calaceite, called Roca del Moro. In 1906, after having heard of the publication of Alcalde del Rio on the caverns of Santander, he called the attention of archeologists to the figures he had seen three years previously. Breuil heard of the place through a publication of Santiago Vidiella, and visited it in 1908 for the purpose of study. The grotto is 10 meters long by 2.5 meters wide. The floor deposits are barren, but on the slope there are flint flakes of the Magdalenian type and no trace of the neolithic. On the protected wall of the rock shelter were found the handsome frescoes which have been removed to prevent their being destroyed by curious visitors. The removal was successfully made in spite of the hardness of the rock.
The painted frieze comprised three deer, a bull, and a small creature undetermined. All are in dark red, the color having penetrated well into the rock. The figures of the deer were outlined by delicate engraving. One of these is represented as in the act of rising (se levant de son gîte), the attitude being full of grace and natural elegance (pl. 6, fig. a). In this figure and all those of the deer at Cretas there is a curious disposition of the antlers. The upper parts are represented as seen from the front, while the lower parts are in profile. This is also true of figures of the deer at Cogul, Lérida (Catalonia), and in France among the drawings of the rehideer in the cavern of Portel (Ariège).
​On leaving the Roca del Moro at a distance of 200 meters, Breuil chanced to see in another rock shelter a figure painted red. He leaped from his horse and clambered up to the spot to find a companion figure in black and near these, two deer in red and black and three other smaller figures (wild goat) in black. This discovery caused the explorers to change their plans so as to include a reconnaissance tour of the whole province. After three months, Cabré reported that he had found nine other localities with paintings or engravings in open shelters (à l'air libre). A tenth situated to the south of the province has been discovered and it looks, says Breuil, as if we might have the satisfaction of seeing Quaternary art clasp hands by the way of Gibraltar with the rock paintings and engravings of northern Africa.
A Catalonian rock-shelter near Cogul, south of Lérida in the province of the same name, is adorned with frescoes that furnish interesting additional data concerning paleolithic art. These frescoes known for ages were formerly attributed to the Moors. The researches of Breuil prove them to be of Magdalenian age. They form five groups, two of which are shown in plate 6, figure b. Both of these are hunting scenes. Above and to the left is a hunter in the act of striking down a stag after having already killed one. The drawing is highly stylistic without obscuring the real meaning of the ensemble. The dead stag lies on his back with all four feet in the air. The group at the right is a combination of stylistic and realistic art, the figure of the bison being similar to figures of that animal in a number of French and Spanish caverns. But the bison emigrated from south- western Europe before the close of the Quaternary; the Cogul frescoes are therefore Magdelenian. Another remarkable group in this rock shelter represents nine women surrounding one man. The latter is executed in the style of the hunters reproduced in figure b. The female figures are somewhat more realistic and are readily distinguished by skirts reaching to the knees and by pendent breasts. While the presence of feminine skirts gives to the scene a modern air, the art as a whole is more closely related to the paleolithic than to that of any succeeding epoch.
Les Eyzies in the Background; the Vézère River on the Left (Dordogne). (Photograph by G. G. MacCurdy.)
The earlier explorations at Les Eyzies, Cro-Magnon, Gorge-d'Enfer, Laugerie-Basse, Laugerie-Haute, La Madeleine, and Le Moustier are so well known that they are mentioned only in passing. After so long a series of important discoveries, it might well be supposed that the archeological possibilities of the region had been exhausted, yet some of the most important treasures still remained locked in the recesses of the less easily accessible and little known subterranean caverns which penetrate the hills to great depths. The entrances to these caverns are small and invisible from the valley below. Some indeed were completely stopped by hillside debris, leaving no outer trace of their existence. It is not strange that they escaped immediate notice. They were neglected until the early nineties, when Rivière removed some of the floor deposits in the cavern of Les Combarelles that yielded many flint implements, and especially fine bone needles. In 1895, he began work in similar deposits in the cavern of La Mouthe. One day, after penetrating to a considerable depth, he and his companion, the son of Berthoumeyrou, the innkeeper, sat down to rest. In lighting a cigar, the extra light of the match added to the feeble candle light and placed at the proper angle revealed to one of them what had not been observed before—an engraving on the wall. The discovery was duly announced and marked the beginning of a new epoch in cavern explorations.
The mural decorations at La Mouthe occur in four groups or panels. The first panel is about 93 meters from the entrance. The second, 4 meters farther on, is called the "Hall of the Bison." Seven animals are represented on an area 5.02 meters by 2.6 meters. The third and fourth panels are 113 and 130 meters, respectively, from the entrance.
In 1899, Rivière was so fortunate as to find a stone lamp in the floor deposits of this cavern at a point about 17 meters from the entrance. The pick of the workman broke the lamp into four pieces, of which three were immediately recovered. Rivière and two of his men searched for the missing fragment an entire day, but without success. The shallow bowl contained some carbonized matter, an analysis of which led M. Berthelot, the chemist, to conclude that lard was used for lighting purposes. On the base there is an engraving of a wild goat's head and horns. A figure exactly like this was found on the third mural panel already mentioned. This was the fourth lamp to be found in French caverns. The first and second were from the cavern of Monthier (Charente), and the third from the cavern of ​Coual (Lot). The necessities of men dwelling in dark caverns would be likely to lead to the invention of artificial light, which light made it possible for them to depict the frescoes and engravings on the walls of their abodes.
The past ten years have witnessed a succession of remarkable discoveries by Messieurs Capitan, Breuil, Bourrinet, Ampoulange, and Peyrony, in the caverns of Les Combarelles, Font-de-Gaume, Bernifal, Teyjat, La Grèze, and La Calévie.
Fig. 6.—Engraving of a mammoth. Cavern of Les Combarelles (Dordogne). Second phase. 1/7. After Capitan and Breuil.
The Combarelles cavern has a total length of 234 meters, is from 1 to 2 meters wide, and high enough to admit of walking upright for most of the way. The engravings begin at a point about 118 meters from the entrance, and occupy both walls for a distance of 100 meters.
Some of the figures are deeply incised, others are mere scratches. In some, the effect is heightened by the application of a dark coloring matter (oxide of manganese). Portions of the walls are covered by a coating of stalactite thick enough in places completely to hide engravings, while in others the more deeply incised figures are still visible. On areas devoid of incrustations, the figures are fresh and distinct. The artist sometimes had recourse to champlevé; sometimes natural prominences were utilized to add relief to the figures. Of the 109 engravings of various animals on the walls at Les Combarelles there are some forty equine figures, occurring either singly or in groups, and fourteen of the mammoth. One of the latter is reproduced in figure 6. The mural engravings belong precisely to the ​same school of art as the relief and incised figures from the floor deposits of the shallow caves and rock-shelters, so well known through the works of the earlier investigators. This statement applies equally to all the caverns thus far explored.
The cavern of Bernifal was first explored in 1903. It was discovered by accident. The original entrance near the base of an escarpment is completely obstructed by earth and stones. The present artificial entrance is at a point where the ceiling of the cavern comes close to the surface of the wooded sloping upland. The descent into the cavern is almost vertical, and made by means of an iron ladder about 3 meters long. There is a joint in the ladder, the upper portion of which may be inclined and locked so as to secure the interior against vandalism. Within are three large chambers united by rather narrow corridors. The first is 22 meters long, with high ceiling and a maximum breadth of 8 meters. The others are not quite so large. The beautiful stalactites overhead have been left undisturbed. Most of the engravings are to be found in the second chamber. They are cut rather deeply into the calcareous walls, and generally coated over with a thin, hard layer of stalactite. Twelve groups, numbering in all 26 figures, have been recognized. These include geometric triangular signs in addition to various animal figures—reindeer, mammoth, horse, bison, and antelope. Some are simply engraved, others are painted with red ocher and manganese. Many are probably wholly hidden beneath thick mural incrustations. Tectiform signs, the significance of which is unknown, were also met with at Les Combarelles and Font-de-Gaume.
The Font-de-Gaume frescoes and engravings were discovered in 1901 by Capitan and Breuil with the assistance of M. Peyrony, the school principal of Les Eyzies. The entrance is some 20 meters above the valley and near the top of the escarpment (pl. 8, fig. b).
A passage about 65 meters long, and much restricted in places, leads to an ample gallery 40 meters in length, 2 to 3 in breadth, and 5 to 6 in height. A majority of the paintings—and Font-de-Gaume is especially rich in paintings—occur on the walls of this gallery and in a little side chamber farther on (fig. 7, no. 16). The latter contains 13 remarkable figures, in color, of the bison and a group of reindeer (pl. 9). The coloring matter was red ocher and manganese, either mixed so as to give various intermediate shades or used separately. Both these materials are found on top of the neighboring plateaus. The dimensions of the figures vary from 2.70 meters down to 0.20 meter. Some are on regular surfaces, while others include natural prominences in such a way as to give the effect of relief. They are veritable frescoes, the whole figure often being covered with ​paint. Engraving and fresco are usually associated in the same figure. The coloring matter was, in some cases, applied after the engraving; while in others the process was reversed. Again some figures are a piecework of engraving and fresco. Some are engraved only. In certain cases the outlines of the animal are simply traced by a single stroke of the brush or pencil, usually in black. Where the contours are filled in, various tints from black to red are usually employed. The outlines are seldom marred by blotches or evidences of an uncertain stroke.
Fig. 7.—Floor plan of the cavern of Font-de-Gaume (Dordogne). The numbers indicate the position of the engravings and paintings on the walls.
Fig. 8.—Engraving of a lion or panther, from Font-de-Gaume. After Capitan and Breuil. C. r., Congr. intern, d'anthr. et d'arch. préhs., vol. 1, p. 388, Monaco, 1906.
Of the more than eighty figures described already from Font-de-Gaume, forty-nine represent the bison, four the reindeer, four the horse, three the antelope, two the mammoth, one the stag, one Felis leo, one the wolf (see pl. 10), one Rhinoceros tichorhinus (see pl. 10), six various signs. A number have not yet been determined.
Fig. a.Entrance to the Lower Cavern of Wildkirchli, Canton Appenzell, a Station of Mousterian Age at a Height of 1,477 Meters.
(Photograph by G. G. MacCurdy.)
Fig. b.Entrance to the Cavern Font-de-Gaume. (Dordogne).
(Photograph by G. G. MacCurdy.)
One of the most interesting animal representations on the cavern walls of Dordogne is a drawing in red of Rhinoceros tichorhinus (pl. 10 b), found at Font-de-Gaume near the group that included an engraving of the cave lion, i.e., at the end of the cavern. The figure is not only complete but also exact. The two horns are faithfully indicated, the anterior notably longer and larger than the posterior. The only other representations of the woolly rhinoceros are an indifferent engraving on a piece of stone found in the cavern of Gourdan and recently published by Piette, and one likewise on stone from the grotte du Trilobite at Arcy. The coating of long hair is equally well characterized. The technique points to an archaic phase in the development of Quaternary art. Near this figure is the head of another rhinoceros, also traced with an ochre crayon.
The cavern of Font-de-Gaume opens on a narrow valley tributary to that of the Beune and near their junction. The well-known rock-shelter of Les Eyzies lies across the valley of the Beune. It is visible from Font-de-Gaume, appearing like a black spot on the face of the great escarpment, and only 800 meters distant. M. Peyrony suggests that the two prehistoric communities may have been closely united. His recent researches at Les Eyzies tend to confirm this view.
The shallow cave of Les Eyzies, overlooking the Beune near its junction with the Vézère, opens on a sort of natural platform about 35 meters above the bed of the stream. The opening of the cave is wide and high enough to admit the light to its greatest depth, which is 12 meters. The greatest width is 16 meters. It has a southern ​exposure, is dry and habitable. Font-de-Gaume was never a place of residence, as is indicated by the absence of floor deposits. About the only objects found there are a few broken gravers with edges dulled in executing the wall engravings, a few pieces of ochre and manganese and one handsome ochre pencil. Why should the artists make residence of a dark subterranean cavern, when by going a short distance they could have an ample shallow cave or rock-shelter facing the south and warmed and lighted by the sun? Such a shelter is Les Eyzies, and the enormous quantities of refuse taken from its floor at various periods testify to its use as a place of habitation by generation after generation.
The rock-shelter of Les Eyzies has furnished unusually large quantities of ochre of various tints. Most of the pieces have been scraped to produce a colored powder which was mixed with grease or some liquid, thus forming a paint. In order to pulverize and thoroughly mix the coloring matter, mortars were used. An interesting series of these mortars from Les Eyzies forms a part of the famous Christy collection in the British Museum. Very few mortars have been found in neighboring stations. Besides, ochre pencils exactly like the one from Font-de-Gaume have been found in the rock- shelter of Les Eyzies. Sometimes a flat piece of ochre is cut in the form of a triangle, each angle serving in turn as a pencil point. Some of these pencils are perforated to be suspended, and might well be supposed to form a part of the outfit of the artists who drew in color figures such as that of the two-horned rhinoceros previously mentioned.
It may be that the artists who made their home at Les Eyzies decorated its walls also. Exposure would have obliterated these decorations long ago, as it did those at La Grèze, which were not protected by the floor deposits. Lucky it was for present-day lovers of art and archeology that their troglodyte forebears had the good sense to seek at Font-de-Gaume a more permanent gallery for their masterpieces.
The cavern of La Calévie belongs in the Vézère group and is situ- ated on the left side of the Petite Beune, some 500 meters below Bernifal. The cavern, which has two entrances, is 15 meters wide by 7 or 8 meters deep. Near the entrance are two engraved figures of the horse, one of them recalling the work at Les Combarelles. As the latter is Magdalenian, this is probably Magdalenian also. The other is in the style of Pair-non-Pair, which is well dated, because there the upper Aurignacian floor deposits cover the mural figures.
The rock shelter of La Grèze is only 6 kilometers above Les Eyzies, on the right bank of the main fork of the Beune. Fortunately some of its wall engravings have been protected by the floor deposits. As the latter contain an industry of Solutréan age, both the authenticity ​and the age of the engravings are established in the same manner as at Pair-non-Pair. An engraving from La Grèze representing the first phase in the development of parietal decoration is reproduced in figure 9.
Before leaving the caverns of the Vézère Valley it should be noted that recent discoveries there have not been confined to mural art alone. The classic station of Les Eyzies is only one of many rock-shelters in the same cliff. To the east of it only a few rods and at the same level is the station of Peyrille, yielding an industry with lower Magdalenian facies. A short distance to the west of the Grotte des Eyzies and at a slightly higher (2.50 meters) level is the rock-shelter of Escalifer, with lower Mousterian industry. A few meters still farther to the west and on the same level as Escalifer is the rock-shelter of Audi, with a superposition of Aurignacian on Mousterian. Some 5 or 6 miles to the east of this group of stations is the rock-shelter of Laussel near a chateau of the same name and also near the rock-shelter of La Grèze. Explored originally by E. Rivière in 1894, new excavations were made by Doctor Lalanne in 1908. The Laussel section revealed in stratigraphic position a succession of layers, including Acheulian, Mousterian, Aurignacian in two separate horizons, and Solutréan.
​The station of La Micoque, some 2 kilometers to the northwest of Les Eyzies, although discovered in 1895, should be mentioned in this connection because of recent excavations by Hauser and others. Cartailhac and Hauser believe it to have been protected originally by an overhanging rock. According to Rutot it was always, as it now appears to be, a station in the open. The industry is Mousterian, with traces of a ruder paleolithic facies at the bottom and Aurignacian at the top.
One of the latest additions to the long list is the rock-shelter of Le Hut, about half a mile below the celebrated station of Le Moustier and on the same side of the Vézère River, excavated in 1907 by D. Peyrony. The section at Le Rut overlaps and supplements that of Laussel. It begins with the middle and upper Aurignacian, above which are added three Solutréan horizons and one Magdalenian.
Other regions of the Dordogne have not been neglected. The cavern of La Mairie and the rock-shelter of Mège, both at Teyjat, are near Javerlhac, a railway station on the line between Nontron and Angoulême. Some twenty years ago M. Perrier du Carne found in La Mairie cavern Magdalenian implements and five remarkable engravings on stone representing the horse and the bison. In 1903 three groups of engravings (fig. 10) were discovered on the walls of the cavern, and during the same year the rock-shelter of Mège in ​the immediate neighborhood was first explored. Here there is only one archeological horizon—middle Magdalenian, corresponding to the lower culture level at La Mairie. It is rich, however, both in fauna and industrial remains. The latter is characterized by the harpoon with a single lateral row of barbs, the type that was abundant at Gourdan, Raymunden, and Bruniquel (Plantade). In 1908 M. Bourrinet found at Mège a so-called bâton de commandement of stag horn (pl. 11), covered with engraved animal and semi-human figures. The piece is the large basal prong of Cervus elaphus, about one-third of a meter in length. Of the two perforations, one is nearly round and the other, which is near the point, is elliptic. Practically the entire surface was scraped and engraved with figures, including the head of a doe, serpents, swans, semi-human forms, a horse, and a colt. The engraving of the horse is among the most painstaking and complete paleolithic representations of that animal (fig. 11). The elliptic hole in the baton cuts the left hip of the horse on one side and its right hind foot on the other, as indicated by the dotted lines. The short erect mane projecting forward beyond the ears is characteristic and the anatomy of the head, neck, and shoulders is faithfully rendered, even to the fossa above the eye. The heavy line back of and below the eye is the zygomatic arch; the two parallel lines below it, reaching nearly to the corner of the mouth, mark the position of subcutaneous organs and do not represent a bridle. According to both Cartailhac and Breuil, there is no evidence that the horse was domesticated in paleolithic times. Marcel Baudouin notes a striking similarity between paleolithic representations of the Quaternary horse and a race of small horses still living on the Île d'Yeu (Vendée). This race by reason of its isolation has perpetuated its primitive type: Large pendent belly, short head and neck, and erect mane.
The cavern de La Mairie has furnished some interesting bits of evidence bearing on the authenticity of parietal decorations. In the floor deposits are two Magdalenian horizons with a sterile layer between. Wall engravings were left by the first occupants. In the course of time, with the loosening of plaques of stalagmite, some of these engravings were removed. A small fragment of this sort bearing the tail and hip of a bison was found in the lower layer. Later a larger fragment with the rest of the bison was found in the sterile deposit that covers the lower archeological horizon (middle Magdalenian). The two pieces united are seen in figure 12. Other blocks of stalagmite were found to enclose engravings and when properly split disclosed their negative imprints. The feet of a horse that are ​missing from one wall engraving were found in the upper Magdalenian floor deposit, proving that the drawing in question was at least as old as the deposit enclosing it, and may have dated from the first occupation of the cavern.
Plate 11.
The excellent preservation of these parietal works of art is due in many cases to the accidental sealing up of the caverns toward the close of the Quaternary. This was the case not only at Altamira, but also at Marsoulas (Haute-Garonne) and Teyjat. That frescoes and engravings are not found on the walls near entrances that were never sealed, but do occur at safe distances from the cavern mouths, is at least negative proof of their antiquity. For the first 60 meters at Font-de-Gaume, one finds no mural art (see fig. 7), and the anterior barren stretch is still greater at Les Combarelles, La Mouthe, and Niaux.
Judged by its parietal art, the cavern of Marsoulas (Haute-Garonne) is a connecting link between Altamira and the Périgord, Gironde, and Gard group of caverns. Marsoulas had been explored from 1880 to 1884 by the Abbé Cau-Durban, who discovered Solutréan and Magdalenian hearths in its floor deposits. At that time he saw certain red outlines on the walls, but supposing they could not date from paleolithic times he did not mention them. The dis​coveries at La Mouthe led to Félix Regnault's successful search in 1897 for mural art at Marsoulas. In 1902, through a subvention of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Cartailhac and Breuil began their study of the cavern which opens on an affluent of the Salat. About the close of the Magdalenian epoch, the anterior part of the Marsoulas cavern was filled by a fall of earth and stone, thus accounting for the complete absence of neolithic culture and the good preservation of the wall decorations.
The principal figures number fourteen and comprise six horses, six bison, one wild goat, and one deer. Of the more than one hundred partial figures, a majority represent the bison. Here, as elsewhere, are found problematical figures that might be construed as caricatures of man. The details of a fine polychrome bison, painted over a partially etfaced series of figures in black, are exactly similar to those in the polychrome frescoes of Altamira and Font-de-Gaume,
One curious figure of a bison (pl. 12, fig. a) is done in a peculiar technique. The head was first engraved, then painted reddish brown, the horns remaining without color. The entire body was filled in with dots or small spots carefully arranged, as if done with the point of a brush. At Marsoulas there are at least three distinct layers of wall decorations, probably dating from the Aurignacian, Solutréan, and lower Magdalenian epochs.
The large caverne des Forges at Niaux (Ariège) is about 4 kilometers from Tarascon. On account of its size Niaux has for a long time been looked upon as a sort of show place. In 1886 Doctor Garrigou noted the presence of drawings on the walls of this cavern. They were rediscovered in 1906. This is another one of the caverns being explored by Cartailhac and Breuil, at the expense of the Académie des Inscriptions and by authority of the Administration des Eaux et Forêts.
Plate 12.
One of the striking features about paleolithic art is its realism. This is especially true of the phases leading to the period of its highest development. Recent investigations confirm in the main Piette's views as to the evolution of Quaternary art, although the successive stages overlap more than he had supposed. Sculpture appeared in the lower Aurignacian, but continued without interruption through the Solutréan and to the middle of the Magdalenian—a much longer period than Piette had in mind. Although beginning but little earlier than engraving, sculpture came to full fruition first. Engraving, on the other hand, developed more slowly at first, not reaching its zenith till the middle Magdalenian, when it supplanted sculpture.
The sculptor's problem is in many respects the simpler, his opportunity of success greater. Not confined to a single aspect of his model, he has as many chances of succeeding as there are angles from which to view his work. The engraver or painter, on the other hand, must seize the likeness at the first attempt or else fail. His model was almost always an animal form, generally a quadruped. The most striking, as well as the most complete, single aspect of a quadruped is its profile. This happens to be the view that can be most easily represented on a plane surface.
In dealing, however, with the human form the problem is more complex. So far as the head is concerned, the profile presents fewer difficulties and at the same time is quite as characteristic as the front view. With the body it is just the reverse, the view from the front being the most complete and characteristic as well as the easiest to manage. This element of complexity in a given aspect of the human form must have confused the primeval engraver and painter not a little, although it was not of such a nature as to disturb the sculptor. Herein may lie the reasons why the latter chose as models man and four-footed animals indifferently, while the former's predilections for quadruped forms were so pronounced. At any rate, the fact is that a large majority of paleolithic engravings and practically all the paintings are animal profiles. The earliest ones are in absolute profile, thus simplifying the problem of representing the legs with- out materially detracting from the general effect.
By degrees more freedom entered into the execution of the figures and more or less successful attempts were made at bringing out details of anatomy by means of incised lines or color or both. The artist, however, retained his predilection for profiles. Attempts at rendering any other aspect are rare even in the Magdalenian. One of the most creditable efforts is the front view of a reindeer incised on a piece of reindeer horn (fig. 13). That the artist was ignorant, ​however, of the laws of perspective is painfully evident. This specimen is from the lower Magdalenian horizon of the cavern of Gourdan (Haute-Garonne).
From the beginning of the Magdalenian epoch, symbolism began to play an important role in paleolithic art. According to Piette, symbols are figures or images employed as signs of objects; therefore they represent words. In the process of time the words were divided into syllables, the syllables into letters; the same signs have designated successively words, syllables, and letters. Among the earliest paleolithic symbols are the dotted circle, the lozenge and the spiral or sigmoid scroll. The first is supposed to be a sun symbol. It reappears as an Egyptian hieroglyph, also on dolmens and menhirs, on bronze age funerary urns and ornaments of the first iron age. The circle without the dot passed into the ancient alphabets and from them into modern alphabets. The lozenge was employed as an artist's signature. The spiral has flourished in all succeeding ages and like some other Symbols may have developed independently in various ages and lands.
Piette distinguishes two successive systems of writing in the Magdalenian—the first hieroglyphic and the second cursive. He believes the latter was derived from the former, but admits that since symbols are creatures of convention they may have been from the beginning figures formed by geometric lines instead of being simplified images. An example of cursive writing dating from the Magdalenian epoch is given in figure 17. It is from the classic station of La ​Madeleine (Dordogne). The inscription is composed of eight signs, some of which resemble certain letters of the Phenician and ancient Greek alphabet, as well as Cypriote signs. While these may not have been real letters to the Magdalenians, they did become so in passing from a symbolic and phonetic stage combined to one purely phonetic.
The first sign resembles the Phenician guimel, the gamma of ancient and modern Greek and a sign in Asylian writing which dates from the epoch of transition between the paleolithic and neolithic. Allowing for some negligence in execution, the second sign is comparable to the Phenician alef, the alpha of ancient and classic Greek, and A of our own alphabet. The third character is the Phenician guimel, the gamma of primitive and classic Greek. The fourth sign is the same as the third, only reversed. This is also found in the Asylian. The fifth and sixth signs are alike; they are comparable to the letter l of the Lycian alphabet and of the classic Greek—the equivalent of the Cypriote sign go. The seventh sign, which is also found on one of the painted pebbles of Mas d'Azil, resembles the character ti, di, thi of the Cypriote alphabet. The eighth character bears some analogy to the Cypriote vi or yi.
HUMAN REMAINS.
The decade has witnessed the discoveries of skeletal remains of man that have added much to our knowledge of the races inhabiting Europe during the Quaternary. Because of the stratigraphic position in which it was found and of its somatological characters, the human lower jaw discovered by Dr. Otto Schoetensack on October 21, 1907, in a sandpit near the village of Mauer, 10 kilometers southeast of Heidelberg, ranks as the most important single specimen. Mauer lies in the valley of the Elsenz, a tributary of the Necker. The human lower jaw was found in situ in the so-called Mauer sands, at a depth of 24.10 meters and 0.87 meter from the bottom of the deposit. The first 10.92 meters at the top of the sections are composed of loess, which is classed as upper Quaternary, while the Mauer sands forming the rest of the section are lower Quaternary. The loess itself represents two distinct periods, an older and a younger.
The horizon (fig. 19) from which the human lower jaw came has furnished other mammalian remains, including Felis spelæa, Felis catus, Canis, Ursus arvernensis, Sus scrofa var. priscus, Cervus latifrons, Bison, Castor fiber, Equus, Rhinoceros etruscus, and Elephas antiquus.
Schoetensack likens the fossil mammalian fauna of the Mauer sands to the preglacial Forest beds of Norfolk and the upper Pliocene of southern Europe. This is particularly true of Rhinoceros etruscus, and the horse of Mauer, which is a transition form between Equus stenonis cocchi and the horse of Taubach, both of which may be referred definitely to the Pliocene. The rest of the mammalian fauna belongs to the lower Quaternary.
The coexistence of man with Elephas antiquus at Taubach, near Weimar, gave Schoetensack special reasons for expecting to find human remains also at Mauer. The possibility of such a discovery had kept him in close touch for twenty years with the owner of the sandpit, Herr J. Rösch. The discovery was made by one of the workmen, with whom at the time were another workman and a boy. Schoetensack was immediately informed, and arrived the following day. The lower jaw was intact, but the stroke of the workman's ​shovel had caused the two halves to separate along the line of symphysis. It was discolored, and marked by incrustations of sand exactly as are all fossil bones from the Mauer sands. A limestone pebble was so firmly cemented to the left half of the jaw, covering the premolars and first two molars, that the crowns of all four stuck to the pebble when the latter was removed. Both the jaw and the pebble were marked by dendritic formations.
Plate 13.
Fig. a. Lower Jaw of Homo heidelbergensis. About 3/4.
Fig. b. Lower Jaw of Homo heidelbergensis. After Schoetensack, Der Unterkiefer des Homo heidelbergensis, Leipzig, 1908.
The crowns of the teeth in the Mauer specimen are worn enough to show the dentine, proof that the individual had reached the adult stage. All the molars, except the third left, have five cusps. The tendency in recent man is toward a four-cusp type for the third molar, if indeed there be a third molar. The breaking away of the crowns of four teeth on the left side tended to facilitate the study of the pulp cavities and the walls. This study reveals the fact that the dentition of Homo heidelhergensis represents a youthful stage in the dentition of the modern European. That is to say, in the ontogeny of the latter, a stage representing adult dental characters when the race was young is now reached at the age of from 9 to 14 years. This is not an anthropoid character, but a primitive human character—another reason for leaving the anthropoids to one side in our search for the ancestral form and the origin of genus Homo.
A study of the corpus and ramus mandibulæ reveals at once a number of points of divergence from the modern European. The body is massive, and relatively long in proportion to the bicondylar breadth, its greatest height being in the region of the first and second molars. The basis mandibulæ, if applied to a plane, touches only on either side of the symphysis and near the angulus, forming three gentle arches—one median and short, called by Klaatsch incisura sub-mentalis; and two lateral and long, to which might be given the name incisura basilaris. The latter is seen to good advantage also in the chimpanzee.
The ramus is characterized by unusual breadth, 60 millimeters as opposed to an average of 37 for recent examples. The angle formed by lines tangent to the basis and the posterior border of the ramus is 107°—smaller than the average. The processus coronoideus is exceedingly blunt, and the incisura mandibular correspondingly shallow. The condyloid process is noteworthy on account of the extent of articular surface, due to an increased antero-posterior diameter (13 and 16 millimeters), since the transverse diameter is relatively short. The neck constriction is very slight, approaching in this respect the anthropoid forms.
The first fossil lower jaw to attract world-wide attention on account of its primitive characters and association with remains of ​the mammoth and rhinoceros, was that found in 1866 by Dupont in the cavern of La Naulette, valley of the Lesse, Belgium. It was only a fragment, but enough remained to demonstrate the complete absence of chin and the nature of the dentition. Its kinship with the man of Neanderthal, whose lower jaw could not be found, was evident. It tended therefore to legitimatize the latter, which hitherto had failed of general recognition. The fortunate association of skull with lower jaw came in 1886, when the remains of two individuals were discovered in the cavern of Spy, also in Belgium. In the same layer were found not only remains of the mammoth and the rhinoceros, but also an industry of the Mousterian type.
Among the human remains found in 1899 by Professor Gorjanovič-Kramberger at Krapina, there are parts of a number of lower jaws that bear the same racial characters as those of La Naulette and Spy. They were also associated with a Mousterian industry. Instead, however, of the Rhinoceros tichorhinus, as at Spy, there were remains of Rhinoceros merckii, an older type. This may be accounted for by the fact that Rhinoceros merckii would persist longer in the south than in the north.
That the lower jaws of La Naulette, Spy, and Krapina represent one and the same stage in the evolution of Homo sapiens, there is no longer any doubt. That this stage is intermediate between recent man and Homo heidelbergensis, a careful comparison of the specimens in question furnishes ample proof. The lower jaw from Mauer is therefore pre-Neanderthaloid. That it also exhibits pre- anthropoid characters gives it a fundamental position in the line of human evolution. Doctor Schoetensack is to be congratulated on his rich reward for a twenty years' vigil.
The lower jaws of the Neanderthal, or so-called primigenius, type, mentioned above, were all found in cavern or rock-shelter deposits. These cannot be definitely correlated with river-drift and loess; hence we cannot measure the time that separates the man of Spy from Homo heidelbergensis. Judging from somatic characters alone, the time separating the two must have been considerable.
The Mousterian industry which is found associated with Homo primigenius occurs in deposits that mark the close of the middle Quaternary, and also in cavern deposits corresponding to the base of the upper Quaternary. It belongs to the transition from the Riss glacial period to the Riss-Würm interglacial period. At Wild- kirchli, in the Alps, it is frankly interglacial, a station that probably belongs to the close of the Mousterian epoch.
Plate 14.
Homo primigenius, or mousteriensis, from the Cavern of Le Moustier (Dordogne). (Photographs by O. Hauser.)
During the summer of 1908, Herr O. Hauser found part of a human skeleton, including the skull, in the classic station of Le Moustier itself. This station, belonging to a wonderful series of paleolithic sites in the valley of Vézère, France, has been known since the explorations of Lartet and Christy, 1863–1865. Hauser very wisely delayed the removal of the human remains from the cavern of Le Moustier until after the arrival of a party of German anthropologists, including Professor Klaatsch, of Breslau, the party going direct from the German Anthropological Congress held at Frankfurt during the first week in August.
Hauser's discovery was made in the lower cave at Le Moustier, and includes not only an almost complete skull (pl. 14, figs, a, b) but also various parts of the skeleton of a youth of about 15 years. At this age, sex can not be determined from the bones alone. The race characters also are not so distinct as they would be at full maturity; but they point unmistakably to the type of Neandertal, Spy, and Krapina—the so-called Homo primigenius which now also becomes Homo mousteriensis. It was a rather stocky type, robust and of a low stature. The arms and legs were relatively short, especially the forearm and from the knee down, as is the case among the Eskimo. Ape-like characters are noticeable in the curvature of the radius and of the femur, the latter being also rounder in section than is the case with Homo sapiens. In the retreating forehead, prominent brow ridges, and prognathism it is approached to some extent by the modern Australian. The industry associated with this skeleton from Le Moustier is that typical of the Mousterian epoch.
A discovery of paleolithic human remains was made on August 3, 1908, by the Abbés J. and A. Bouyssonie and L. Bardon, assisted by Paul Bouyssonie, a younger brother of the first two. It is in many respects one of the most satisfactory, particularly on account of the pieces being so nearly complete. The locality is the village of La Chapelle-aux-Saints, 22 kilometers south of Brive, in the department of Corrèze, which forms a part of one of France's celebrated cavern belts, including Dordogne, Charente, and Gironde to the west.
The discovery at La Chapelle-aux-Saints was made in a cavern a short distance from the entrance. It includes not only human bones, but also stone implements and the remains of the reindeer. Bison, Equus, Capra ibex., Rhinocerous tichorhinus, fox, bird.
​That this may have been a burial is suggested by the disposition of the human remains which seemed to lie in a rectangular pit sunk to a depth of 30 centimeters in the floor of the cavern. They were covered by a deposit intact 30 to 40 centimeters thick, consisting of a magma of bone, of stone implements, and of clay. The stone implements belong to a pure Mousterian industry. While some pieces suggest a vague survival of the Acheulian implement, others presage the coming of the Aurignacian. Directly over the human skull were the foot bones, still in connection, of a bison—proof that the piece had been placed there with the flesh on, and proof, too, that the deposit had not been disturbed. Two hearths were noted also, and the fact that there were no implements of bone, the industry differing in this respect from that at La Quina and Petit-Puymoyen (Charente), as well as at Wildkirchli, Switzerland.
The human bones include the cranium and lower jaw (broken, but the pieces nearly all present and easily replaced in exact position), a few vertebræ and long-bones, several ribs, phalanges and metacarpals, clavicle, astragalus, calcaneum, parts of the scaphoid, ilium, and sacrum. The ensemble denotes an individual of the male sex, whose height was about 1.60 meters. The condition of the sutures and of the jaws prove the skull to be that of an old man. The cranium is dolichocephalic, with an index of 75. It is said to be flatter in the frontal and occipital regions than those of Neanderthal and Spy.
Plate 15.
Boule estimated the capacity of the Chapelle-aux-Saints skull according to the formulæ of Manouvrier, of Lee, and of Beddoe, obtaining results that varied between 1,570 and 1,750 cubic centimeters. By the use of millet and of shot an average capacity of 1,626 cubic centimeters was obtained. Judging from these figures the capacity of the crania of Neandertal and Spy has been underestimated by Schaaffhausen, Huxley, and Schwalbe.
By its cranial capacity, therefore, the Neandertal race belongs easily in the class of Homo sapiens. But we must distinguish between relative capacity and absolute capacity. In modern man, where the transverse and antero-posterior diameters are the same as in the skull of La Chapelle-aux-Saints, the vertical diameter would be much greater, which would increase the capacity to 1,800 cubic centimeters and even to 1,900 cubic centimeters. Such voluminous modern crania are very rare. Thus Bismarck, with horizontal cranial diameters scarcely greater than in the man of La Chapelle-aux-Saints, is said to have had a cranial capacity of 1,965 cubic centimeters.
The most remarkable thing about the astragalus is the special development of the articular surface for the lateral malleolus, development that recalls the condition in anthropoids and climbing mammals. This seems to indicate that, as among anthropoids, the foot of the man of La Chapelle-aux-Saints should repose on its external margin, also that the fibula was relatively more powerful than is the case among modern races.
The calcaneum is characterized by its shortness and especially by the large dimensions of the lesser process (sustentaculum tali). The latter in its proportions resembles that in the Veddahs and in anthropoids.
During the autumn of 1909 M. D. Peyrony, of Les Eyzies, had the good fortune to discover human remains of Mousterian age at two different localities in the department of Dordogne. The first find was made in a small cavern at Pech de l'Azé, 5 kilometers from Sarlat. Here in undisturbed upper Mousterian deposits was found the skull of a child five or six years old. About it were the numerous animal bones broken artificially, the teeth of the horse, deer, reindeer, and an abundance of Mousterian implements. The lower Mousterian deposit on which the skull rested contained fine implements of the Acheulian type.
M. Peyrony's second discovery was made September 17, 1909, in the rock-shelter of La Ferrassie near Bugue. The section at La Ferrassie comprises five archeological horizons, Acheulian, Mousterian, ​and lower, middle, and upper Aurignacian. It was between the Acheulian and Mousterian deposits and at a depth of 3 meters that an almost complete human skeleton was found. Although in part crushed by the enormous weight of earth above, all the bones were in place with the exception of those of the right foot and hand, which had been displaced and partially destroyed, probably by some carnivore or rodent. The skeleton has been removed intact with care and, it is hoped, will soon be published in detail. Unlike the case of La Chapelle-aux-Saints, this was not an interment. The body was placed at one corner of the shelter and covered with branches or skins, perhaps a little earth, or all three of these combined. About the head and shoulders were three stones that might have served as weights. Gradually it was covered deeper and deeper by debris from the overhanging rocks and that left by succeeding Aurignacian populations. Its stratigraphic position is clearly defined. A more extended report as to its somatological characters is awaited with much interest. It should not only confirm but also supplement existing data bearing on the osteology of Homo primigenius, as did the remains from La Chapelle-aux-Saints.
Thanks to persistent, painstaking, systematic explorations, the Dordogne seems destined to maintain its lead in matters paleolithic. Herr O. Hauser who made the important discovery of Homo mousteriensis at Le Moustier in 1908 has been also rewarded with a rich harvest in 1909. At Combe-Capelle, near Montferrand-Périgord, he found on August 26 an adult male skeleton of Aurignacian age. The type, however, is of a higher order than that of his Homo mousteriensis, the difference being greater than might be inferred from its stratigraphic position. The remains had been interred, the pit being sunk into a deposit of Mousterian age. The stone implements found with the skeleton about the head, arms, knees, and feet are Aurignacian. For this reason Klaatsch suggests the name Homo aurignacensis hauseri. A number of snail shells were also deposited with the dead, probably as ornaments. As was the case the previous year at Le Moustier, Professor Klaatsch, of Breslau, was called to Combe-Capelle to superintend the removal of the skeleton (pls. 16, 17).
Plate 16.
Homo aurignacensis hauseri, from the Rock Shelter of Combe-Capelle (Dordogne).. (Photographs by O. Hauser.)
Plate 17.
Skull of Homo aurignacensis hauseri. (Photographs by O. Hauser.)
The caverns of Grimaldi (Baoussé-Roussé), between Mentone and Ventimiglia and on the Italian side of the international boundary, form one of the most compact groups of paleolithic caverns in all Europe.
Counting two small rock-shelters, the group includes nine stations, the most important being the Grotte des Enfants, La Barma Grande, Grotte du Cavillon and the Grotte du Prince. General attention was first called to this region many years ago by Rivière's discovery of a human skeleton in the Grotte du Cavillon—the so-called homme de Menton, now in the Natural History Museum, Paris. Later five skeletons in all were found at La Barma Grande, and two, of children, in the Grotte des Enfants, whence its name.
Interest in archeology and ownership of one of the caverns (Grotte du Prince), led the Prince of Monaco to provide for a systematic exploration of the Grimaldi cavern deposits hitherto undisturbed, beginning with the virgin Grotte du Prince. The work was placed in the hands of the Canon L. de Villeneuve, Prof. M. Boule, and Dr. R. Verneau. The Grotte du Prince proved to be rich in faunal remains. Not a single human bone was found, however, although as many as twenty-eight hearths were encountered. The age, therefore, of the skeletons previously found in the neighboring caverns still remained in doubt. Work was next begun (1900) in the Grotte des Enfants that had been only partially explored by Rivière. Here, as at the Grotte du Prince, the entire series of deposits was found to be Quaternary; the occupation of the cavern, however, is supposed to have begun and to have ended a little later than at the Prince's cavern.
The two layers at the bottom were characterized by a so-called warm or tropical fauna—Elephas antiquus and Rhinoceros merckii. All the succeeding layers contain the fauna of the reindeer. The explorers were rewarded by finding human remains at three distinct levels, all three being in the reindeer deposits. Beginning at the bottom, a common sepulture with an adult female and youthful male skeleton was encountered at a depth of 8.5 meters and resting directly on the deposits with the fauna of Elephas antiquus. On account of their accentuated negroid characters, these differ from all other Quaternary skeletons. To this type, which Verneau has called the Race de Grimaldi, attention has been called afresh by the Venus of Willendorf, a stone figurine recently discovered near Krems, Austria.
At a level of less than a meter above the common sepulture with negroid remains was found a male skeleton of the Cro-Magnon type. The fauna of the two horizons is precisely the same, and con​tinues to be uniform to the top of the section. The female skeleton, therefore, found by de Villeneuve at a depth of 1.9 meters from the surface is Quaternary, belonging probably to the close of the Magdalenian epoch. It has certain negroid characters, such as relatively long forearms and thighs. The slight parieto-occipital flattening suggests the Cro-Magnon type, while in some respects it is not unlike the neolithic dolichocephals.
The reindeer is associated with three successive cultural epochs—Aurignacian, Solutréan, and Magdalenian, respectively. All three epochs are probably represented at the Grotte des Enfants, I'll which case the negroid skeletons might be considered as of Aurignacian age. Immediately below were remains of Elephas antiquus. It may be recalled that at Krapina, the latter was associated with a Mousterian industry and skeletal remains of the Homo primigenius type.
The human skeletal remains from the Grotte des Enfants are all referable to the reindeer period, the transitional Asylian epoch not being represented there. Thanks to the researches of Dr. R. R. Schmidt in the cavern of Ofnet, a number of human skulls dating from the Asylian have been brought to light. Stratigraphically, Ofnet is, after Sirgenstein, one of Germany's most important paleolithic stations. An instructive section of the deposits is reproduced in plate 18, taken at a point just inside the entrance to the cavern. On account of its great weight, the fallen stone at the top had protected this portion of the floor deposits from earlier exploitation. The first two layers are sterile. In the third and fourth, Schmidt found an industry typical for the middle and upper Aurignacian in association with an Equus fauna, including the lemming. The fifth layer marks the appearance of a pure early Solutréan culture, with a continuation of Equus fauna. The lemming reappears at the base of the sixth deposit, which is surmounted by a characteristic upper Magdalenian industry.
Plate 18.
Section through Floor Deposits in the Cavern of Ofnet, Bavaria. After R. R. Schmidt, Achtunddreissigster bericht f. Schwaben und Neuburg (e. V.), 1908.
With the possible exception of a Tardenoisian flint point, there is nothing in this horizon to suggest the neolithic; no ceramics, no remains of domesticated animals, although the neolithic is well represented in the succeeding deposit. In respect to fauna and stratigraphy, it is Asylian. Two typical Asylian cultural elements—flat harpoons of stag horn and painted pebbles—are missing, however. Schmidt classes the industry as Asylo-Tardenoisian. The burial custom leans rather to the paleolithic. The use of ochre and of shell ornaments is common to a number of paleolithic burials: Asylian of Mas d'Azil; Magdalenian of Cro-Magnon, Laugerie-Basse, Grimaldi, and Placard; and Solutréan of Brünn (Moravia). The practice of burying the head alone seems to have been in vogue also at Gourdan, for there according to Piette one never finds any human bones except those of the cranium, lower jaw, and the first two or three cervical vertebræ.
Twenty of the Ofnet crania have been restored and are to be carefully studied by Doctor Schliz, who reports a mixture of the Mediterranean and the Alpine type. The Mediterranean influence on the physical type is not surprising, when viewed in the light of Ofnet's cultural resemblances to stations in southwestern Europe.
CONCLUSIONS.
The first explorer, the original discoverer on a world scale, was primitive man. He had covered the earth before the Europeans of to-day set for themselves the highly interesting task of rediscovering it and him. After some centuries, this self-imposed, instructive, and pleasure-giving problem is nearly solved. Superficially, at least, the earth has been compassed, the blank spots on the world map of to-day being few and comparatively small.
The conquest, however, has been largely one of two dimensions. Now that it is nearly over, we are left all the more free to focus the attention on a whole series of antecedent worlds. This is what Europe is at present doing. She is now bent on discovering the prehistoric worlds beneath her very feet. She has found that man's occupation of the earth has not only length and breadth, but also depth, and therefore admits of measurement in three dimensions instead of two. Surely here is more work for the pathfinder. That success will attend his labors, the discoveries of the past decade offer ample proof.
The older paleolithic horizons, the Strépyan, Chellean, and Acheulian are to be found in valley deposits beginning with the middle Quaternary. The younger paleolithic horizons are quite generally thought of as being restricted to caverns and rock-shelters. Thanks to the results of recent researches, such a view is no longer tenable. With a higher degree of precision and differentiation there is revealed the diluvial equivalents of the upper paleolithic series, Mousterian, Aurignacian, Solutréan, and Magclalenian.
As might be expected the nature of the industry in the upper diluvial series tallies with that of the cave deposits. Thus each category of finds supplements and confirms the other. The only regret of the archeologist is that the work of his predecessors could not be done over again in the light of the latest discoveries. Experimentation in any line presupposes a certain amount of waste. The coefficient of waste in archeological experimentation is unfortunately very high. The valley deposits are well-nigh inexhaustible. Much, therefore, may be expected of them. With caverns the case is different. The supply of those still untouched is limited; the list of those already wholly or in part excavated is long. Think of the Dordogne, Grimaldi, Kent's cavern, as once more virgin fields! The latter, for example, has contributed little toward a better definition of paleolithic chronology, yet judging from the published illustrations it contained practically every type of industry from the Acheulian to and including the Magdalenian.
In paleolithic studies the chief elements of control are stratigraphy, technology, and paleontology. These are all given a place in the table of relative chronology. Perhaps no better summary of the bearing of stratigraphy on the question of paleolithic man could be chosen than a composite section of nonmarine Quaternary deposits as they occur in the Paris Basin and in Belgium. I have chosen Rutot's combination of the three sections: Saint-Acheul (Somme), exploitation Helin at Spiennes, near Mons, and the Thiarmont quarry at Ecaussines, between Brussels and Mons (fig. 20). The section shows the stratigraphic relation not only of the paleolithic to the eolithic below and the neolithic above, but also, by means of a bracket, that portion of the diluvial series for which there are cavern equivalents. It should be recalled, however, that there is no direct stratigraphic relation between the cavern deposits and those of the valleys. At Saint-Acheul and Helin, industries occurred at all the horizons indicated except the Aurignacian and Solutrean. The deposits at Ecaussines corresponding to these two horizons are sterile. By going to Willendorff, in the Danube Valley, near Krems (or to the Rhine Valley), the diluvial cultural series can be completed, as has already been pointed out.
​According to Rutot, the neolithic is wholly superficial, never being found in situ in the brick earth. Whether the latter is entirely barren of industry remains to be determined. As it was deposited by the last flood waters of the Quaternary, to find middle or upper Magdalenian industry near its base should create no surprise. At the other end of the series the paleolithic stops short of the lower Quaternary, the industry of the latter being purely eolithic.
Respecting technology, the various paleolithic types of implements are for the most part so familiar to students of the prehistoric that with one or two exceptions I have deemed it unnecessary to figure them (figs. 4 and 5). They admit of separation into two more or less distinct groups. The older, practically confined to the diluvial deposits, is represented by the Strépyan, Chellean, and Acheulian. The generalized type, common to all three horizons, is the almond-shaped implement chipped on both sides. The younger group, common both to the upper series of diluvial deposits and the caverns, includes the Mousterian, Aurignacian, Solutréan and Magclalenian horizons. Lithologically, it is composed largely of flint flakes that are chipped on one side only. The group is characterized also by the appearance of bone implements and the beginnings of the arts of sculpture, engraving, and painting. In this as well as the older group there is everywhere orderly development marked either by refinement of preexisting forms or the appearance of new ones. The result is that a given combination of cultural phenomena has its definite stratigraphic position. The two kinds of evidence are therefore in harmony.
Of the three elements of control, the least thoroughly mastered is paleontology. Some forms appear, disappear, and reappear. Some, again, persist in certain latitudes much longer than in others. Elephas antiquus, for example, and Rhinoceros merckii existed in France from the beginning of the Quaternary to the lower Acheulian epoch, having retreated from Belgium with the coming on of the Riss glaciation. Farther south, at Grimaldi, we find them contemporary with Mousterian man. Their successors, Elephas primigenius and Rhinoceros tichorhinus, appeared in Belgium as early as the Strépyan and persisted almost until the end of the Quaternary, as their remains have been found in the lower Flandrian deposits (ergeron).
The researches of Commont prove that at the beginning of the paleolithic there were two adjacent contemporary zoological provinces, (1) a northern, including England (for Great Britain and Ireland were then a part of the mainland), Belgium, and northern Ger- many with the fauna of the mammoth, and (2) a southern, including the greater part of the Paris basin and the valley of the Somme, where the fauna of Elephas antiquus still persisted. The fauna of the mammoth overran France in the Acheulian epoch, i.e., about the time that Elephas antiquus retreated toward the south. If these facts ​are kept in mind, the apparent mélange of arctic and tropical types need no longer present insuperable difficulties. It will be readily seen, also, that in the table (pl. 1) no attempt has been made to give either the horizontal or the vertical range of a given species. Each dominant species simply appears once and in one of its favorite horizons.
With man the case is different. Already in the paleolithic he exhibited those universal tendencies for which he has ever since been famous. His horizontal range was over the whole of Europe not preempted by the glaciers and his vertical range covered the entire Quaternary. Fortunately, he can be traced not only by the presence of his own bones, but also by that of his industries. In fact, the bulk of the evidence rests on industrial remains, due in part, at least, to their indestructible character. The decade's discoveries of osseous remains, however, have added immensely to our knowledge of fossil man. The already familiar Neandertal type has become still better known through the finding of well-preserved specimens whose faunal and cultural associations are also more clearly defined than ever before.
New types have been discovered at various horizons, ranging from the Mafflean to the Asylian, giving a fairly comprehensive composite picture of human evolution from near the beginning of the Quaternary to its very close. Neandertal man seems to have been a direct descendant of Homo heidelbergensis, there being little evidence of somatological changes due to admixture of races until after the close of the middle Quaternary. The somewhat sudden appearance of a distinctly higher type in the Aurignacian epoch (Combe-Capelle) is a fact difficult to explain without recourse to the theory of an influx of new blood. Curiously enough, the appearance of this new race is signalized also by great cultural changes— the use of bone implements and the beginnings of sculpture, engraving, and painting. To this Aurignacian element, inherited by the succeeding Magdalenian races belongs much of the credit for the phenomenal art development of the upper paleolithic.
I have endeavored to trace the principal lines along which the science of prehistoric anthropology has been developing, lines that are yearly becoming more distinct. If hitherto they have seemed obscure, it has not been the fault of our ancestors who left their story upon each age in its turn, but is due rather to our slowness to discover the record and interpret it aright. I have also endeavored to show that in both discovery and interpretation the achievements of the past decade are not only highly creditable in themselves, but are also prophetic of a promising future.
* ↑ Two quarto volumes, Monaco, 1906.
* ↑ H. Obermaier. Der diluviale Mensch in der Provinz Santander (Spanien). Praehistorische Zeitschrift, vol. 1, 183, 1909.
* ↑ Station discovered in 1899, but not published comprehensively till 1906.
* ↑ E. von Koken and R. R. Schmidt have in preparation a larse work to be called "Die paläolithischen Kulturstätten Deutschlands."
* ↑ Paleolit na zboczu Gory smardzewskiej. Kosmos, vol. 31, Lemberg, 1906.
* ↑ American Anthropologist, u. s., vol. 7, 425–479, 1905.
* ↑ Some phases of prehistoric archeology. Proc. Am. Ass. Adv. Sci., vol. 56, 1907.
* ↑ Max Verworn. Ein Objectives Kriterium für die Beurteilung der Manufaktnatur geschlagener Feuersteine. Zeit. für Ethnol., vol. 40, 548, 1908.
* ↑ The writer spent a day at Boncelles but failed to find an eolith.
* ↑ The Yale University Museum is indebted to M. Giraux for a gift collection from La Quina, comprising stone industry as well as utilized bones.
* ↑ Recherches sur l'évolution du Moustérien dans le gisement de La Quina (Charente). l$^r$ fasc.: Ossements utilisés. In 4°, Schleicher Frères, 1907.
* ↑ Compte-rendu, Acad. des Sci., Paris, vol. 68, March ], 1869.
* ↑ See table of relative chronology (pl. 1).
* ↑ L'Abbé H. Breuil et Juan Cabré Aguila. Les peintures rupestres du bassin inférieur de l'Èbre. L'anthr., vol. 20, 1, 1909. I. Les rochers peints de Calapata à Cretas (Bas Aragon).
* ↑ Boletin de hist. y geogr, del Bajo Aragon, mars-avril, 1907.
* ↑ This province has a very dry climate.
* ↑ Most of the prehistoric monuments of France are now the property of the Government and are protected by the enactment and enforcement of wise laws.
* ↑ Le Dr. Capitan. l'Abbé Breuil et Peyrony. Nouvelles observations sur la grotte des Eyzies et ses relations avec celles de Font-de-Gaume. Compte rendu, Congrès préh. de France, 1905, p. 137.
* ↑ The Île d'Yeu was a part of the mainland until near the close of the Quaternary.
* ↑ L'anthropologie, vol. 14, 177, 1903.
* ↑ Provincial form for Maison d'Asyle, whence Piette's name (Asylian) for the epoch.
* ↑ Der Unterkiefer des Homo Heidelbergensis aus den Sanden von Mauer bei Heidelberg: Ein Beitrag zur Paläontologie des Mensehen, von Otto Schoetensack. Mit 13 Tafeln, davon 10 in Lichtdruck. Leipzig: Verlag von Wilhelm Engelmann, 1908.
* ↑ American Anthropologist, 1902, n.s., vol. 4, 474.
* ↑ Spy approximates more closely the Mauer type than does Krapina.
* ↑ Die vorgeschichtlichen Kultiuren der Ofnet. Bericht des naturwissenschaftl. Vereins für Schwaben und Neuberg (E. V.). 85, 1908.