The Durham daily globe. (Durham, N.C.) 1889-1894, 1893-07-11
CANNi5ALS OF ANCIENT TINES

vsst Quantities of Inrc-~---.,--- :, --:~s F-o,sal
in Caves of Southern Europe.
The scientists holding the belief that
man is very ancient animal on earth
have referred for evidence to numerous
caves in southern Europe and elsewhere,
which were doubtless inhabited by
many generations CT human beings for
the sake of shelter and security. These
caverns contain great numbers of hui
man bones and primitive tools, which,
it is alleged. have been found numerous
instances mixed with fragments Of
skeletons of the huge cave bear, the
saber-tOothcd tiger, the woody rhinOc-
eros, the giant beaver and even the
elephas antiquus, which was the
ancestor of the mammoth and
the elephants of to-day. The floor
ing of ashes from ancient house
hold fires in these caverns is
sometimes as much as twenty feet thick,
representing the accumulatiOns of hun
dreds if not thousands of years. Scat
tered about the ancient hearths are
ever so many bones of men, women and
children, which bear not only traces Of
fire but marks of implements employed
to split them lengthwise for the pur-
pose of getting at the marrow. Thus
it would seem that these savages Of an
tiquity were cannibals.
IN these caves testimony is found OF
many murders committed thousands of
years ago. Skulls of women cleft by
sharp weapons prove that they often
were victims Of savage violence. One
such Uranium of a female bears the
marks Of three penetrating wounds.
The fact that two of them exhibit
signs of having healed shows that she
recovered only to succumb to third
| assault. The ancient occupants
of the caverns appear to have
| depended for food chiefly on the meat
as plentiful in the south of Europe as
sheep are now. Reindeer horn was
their earliest raw material employed
for manufacturing purposes. They
fshed with hooks made of splinters of
| bone pointed at both ends. Twenty
| pounds Of the bones of WATERWAYS, half
roasted, where dug up in a single cave
| at ChaleuX, from which it is inferred
| that these animals CO attributed TO the
| food supply in times of scarcity. 1t
| has been alleged that the jewellers in
| the caverns used the lower jawbone Of
| the cave bear as weapon, the great
canine teeth serving as a point with
which deadly blows could be struck.
Some of the caves were regular fac
tories for making tools and weapons
From the one at Chaleux twenty-thou-
sand flint hatchets, daggers and knives
have been obtained by digging. A
workshop of this kind in Perigord was
devoted to the making of spearheads,
| while another confined itself to abri-
eating tools of reindeer horn. Curious
whistles were turned out from the first
! joint of the reindeer's foot. Many of
the implements and weapons discov-
cred were rudely decorated with repre-
| sensations of fishes. of reindeer and
even mammOths. There,were hunting
scenes carved in bone and horn, in
which men were shown in pursuit of
game or in conflict with beasts One
carving is landscape, with reindeer
browsing, in adlnira bic perspective.
| The British museum owns a supposed
paleolithic poniard of reindeer horn,
with the handle carved in the form of
reindeer, which would not be I'M
worthy of modern art.-Boston Tran
| Corint