The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1880-04-01
PREHISTORIC MAN.
Cornhill Magazine: These ca


human inhabitants of Haconby, who
have left their rudo weapons among the
river gravel or on the hardened floor of
the seaward caves in which they dweIt,
were black skinned savages, lower in de-
velopement than the lowest races of man.
kind now In existence. Their features
probably resembled those of the Aus.
tralian black fellows; but they had larger
and coarser jaws, 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 foreheads, too, were apparently
low and brutal looking, while they plant.
ed their feet less firmly, and stood less
erect than even the naked Andaman Is
landers of our own day. Altogether q
more sorry set of colonists than those
who first took possession of Haconby
you could hardly wish to see. Entering
the Peninsula of Britain at its broa
southeastern isthmus, the primitive
blaekmen pushed their way along the
coast of the German Ocean, then q gull
like the Baltic in our own days, and fed
themselves as they went with mussels
and periwinkles, or with the flesh of
animals which they killed with their sim.
pie 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 beautifully 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 few dexterous side blows
into the rude semblance of q knife. ANY.
thing more simple in the way of mans
handicraft can scar cely be conceived, SC
much SO that many inexperienced people
who see for the first time the weapons
from the Haconby caverns refuse to be.
lleve that they are really the products OF
human art. But those who bave com.
pared them with others found in like
situations elsewhere cannot doubt for q
| moment that they DO verbally bear the
genuine impress of the hand of man.
The black fellows crept cautiously along
the shore, We may be sure; for the for
ests of the interior were thickly stocked
with savage wild beasts-lions, bears,
wolves, and other natural enemies of our
race. But generation after generation,
as their numbers increased, fresh colonies
must nave set out northward and west
ward, family or two at time, in search
of the caves in which they found safety
from the attacks of their forestine foes.
Crossing the lowlying tertiary Jungle
lands, where Essex and the East Anglican
counties now stand, and passing 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 caverns of
West Cliff, which they dug out by means
Of horn splinters, offered capital shell
ter for little knot of families, 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 III abundance-elk,u rus, bison and
red deer; and here they lived for vast
and unknown number of centuries chip
ping the fiints of the cliff for their spears
and arrows, gnawing the bones of ami
mails and hinging away the remnants on
the floor of their caves, decorating them
selves with drilled 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 unsophisti-
clted of primeval trout. On the floor Of
their rock shelters one may find to the
present day these relics of their indus
try, matted together by earth and water,
but still testifying 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.