Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1880-01-20
Pre.HistOric Man.

These earliest human inhabitants of
Haconby, who have left their rude
weapons among the river gravel ,or ON
the hardened floor of the seaward caves
In which they dwelt, were black skim
ned savages, lower in development than
the lowest races of mankind now in
existence. Their features probably re-.
sembled those of the Australian black
fellows but they had larger and coars-
erjaws, in which their great canine teeth
were widely placed, SO as to allow room
in each row to receive the projecting
fangs of the opposite set. Their fore
heads, too, were apparently low and
brutal looking, while they planted their
feet less firmly, and stood less erect than
even the naked Andaman Islanders of
our own day. Altogether more sorry
set OF coiOnists than those who first took
possession of Haconby you could hardly
wish to see. Entering the peninsula of
Britain at its broad southeastern isth-
mus, the primitive black men pushed
their way along the coast of the German
Ocean, then gulf like the Baltic in our
own day, and fed themselves as thew
went with Eussels and periwinkles, or
with the flesh of animals which thew
killed with their simple weapons. They
had no implements of iron or copper;
nothing but rude knives and spear.
heads of flint. Even these were not
ground and polished like the beautiful
ly-finished greensboro hatchets from
the West Indies, which may be seen in
any of our museums, but were mere
rough -hewn ends of flint, Clipped by a
few dexterous side-blows into the rude
semblance Of a knife. Anything more
simple in the way of mans handicraft
can scarcely be conceived, so much so
that many inexperienced people who
see for the first time the weapons from
the Haconby caverns refuse to believe
thatthey are really the products of nu-
nan art. But those who have compar-
ed them with others found in like situa.,
tions elsewhere cannot doubt for a mo.
ment that they do vertably bear the
genuine impress of the hand of q man,
The black fellows crept cautiously along
the shore, We may be sure for the forests
OF the interior were thickly stocked with
savage wild beasts-lions, bears, wolves
rlnes, and other natural enemies of our
| race. But generation after generation
as their numbers increased, fresh coll
| onies must have set out northward and
| westward, q family or two at time, in
search ofthe caves in which they found
| safety from the attacks of their fOrestine
foes. Crossing the low lying tertiary
ljungle-lands, where Essex and the East
Anglian counties now stand, and pass
ing through the like country of the Fen
| district and the Humber Valley, they
| reached at length the Yorkshire Wolds
| and the mouth of the Line. The cav
erns of the West Cliff, which they dug
out by means Of horn splinters, offered
| capital shelter for a little knot of fami-
lies, and the black fellows settled down
| quietly at Haconby as their home. The
| wooded valley of the little stream and
the open moorland in the rear supplied
| them with game in abundance-elk,
urus. bison, and red deer and here they
lived for vast and unknown number
Of centuries, chipping the f1ints of the
cliff for their spears and arrows, gnaw-
! ing the bones of animals and f1inging
away the remnants on the floor of their
caves, decorating themselves with drill
ed ammonites and fossil sea-urchins
from the neighbOring shore, and fishing
in the Line with rude hooks of bone,
almost too obvious, one would say, to
deceive even the most unsOphisticated
of primeval trout. On the floor of their
rock shelters one may find to the pre-
sent day these relics of their industry,
matted together by earth and water, but
still testify clearly to the mode of life
led by the earliest colonists. have
spent many pleasant summer day in
digging out the remains and examining
their contents.-1He COrnhiU Muqdzine,
1