Industry, Commerce, and Social Organization; Fights, Wounds and Trepanation

Industry, Commerce, and Social Organization; Fights, Wounds and Trepanation When we consider the discoveries connected with the Stone age as a whole, we are struck with the immense numbers of weapons of every kind and of every variety of form found in different regions of the globe. The Roman domination extended over a great part of the Old World, and it lasted for many centuries. Everywhere this people, illustrious amongst the nations, has left tokens of its power and of its industry. Roman weapons, jewelry, and coins occupy considerable spaces in our museums; but numerous as are these relics of the Romans, they are far inferior in number to the objects dating from prehistoric times, and flints worked by the hand of man have been picked up by thousands in the last few years, forming incontestable witnesses of the rapid growth of a large population. One important point remains obscure. Schmerling has excavated fifty caves in Belgium, and only found human relics in two or three of them; and of six hundred explored by Lund in Brazil, only six contained human bones. Similar results were obtained in the excavations of the mounds of North America, as well as in the caves of France. M. Hamy, in a book published a few years ago, only mentions twelve finds of human bones, which could, without any doubt, be page 232dated from Palæolithic times. True, this number has been added to by recent discoveries, but it is still quite insignificant. It is the same thing with the kitchen-middings and the Lake settlements. This paucity of actual human remains forms a gap in the evidence relating to prehistoric man, which disturbances and displacements do not sufficiently account for, and to which we shall refer again when speaking of prehistoric tombs. Worked flints are generally found in numbers in one place, probably formerly a station or centre of human habitation. Men were beginning to form themselves into societies, and the dwellings, first of the family and then of the tribe, rapidly gathered together near some river rich in fish, or some forest stocked with game affording plenty of food easily obtained. The caves also afford proofs of the number of men who inhabited them. In one alone, near Cracow, Ossowski discovered 876 bone implements, more than 3,000 flint objects, and thousands of fragments of pottery. From the Veyrier cave, near Mount Salève, were taken nearly 1,000 stone implements; from those of Petit Morin, 2,000 arrow-heads; from that of Côttes, on the banks of the Gartampe, more than 264 pounds` weight of flints, some of the Moustérien and others of the Madeleine type, mixed with the bones of the rhinoceros, and of several large beasts of prey of indeterminate species. The Abbé Ducrost picked up 4,000 flints in one dwelling alone at Solutré, where the soil is calcareous and flint is not native, so that it must have been brought from a distance. More than 8,000 different objects were taken from the fine Neolithic station of Ors in the isle of Oleron; 12,000 chips ofpage 233stone, bearing marks of human workmanship, were picked up in the Thayngen Cave, and more than 80,000 in the different caves of Belgium. The shelter of Chaleux alone yielded 30,000 pieces of stone, at every stage of workmanship, from the waste of the manufactory to the highly finished implement. Other explorers have been no less fortunate. The Marquis of Wavrin found in the environs of Grez no less than 60,000 worked stones belonging to no less than thirty different types, chiefly arrow-heads, some triangular, others almond-shaped, others again cutting transversely, some with and some without feathers, some stalked, others not; in a word, arrows of every known type. Nothing but an actual visit to the Royal Museum of Brussels can give any idea of the importance of the discoveries made in Belgium. The environs of Paris are, however, no less rich. As early as Palæolithic times the valleys of the Seine and its tributaries were evidently inhabited by a numerous population. M. Rivière mentions a station near Clamart, where, in a limited space, he picked up more than 900 flints, some worked, others mere chips, many of which bad been subjected to heat. A sand-pit of Levallois-Perret yielded 4,000 stone objects, and on the plateau of Champigny, full of such terrible memories for the people of France, were found nearly 1,200 flints, knives, polished hatchets, lance heads and scrapers, mixed with numerous fragments of hand-made pottery without ornamentation. Are yet other examples needed? At. de Mortillet estimates at more than 25,000 the number of specimens found on the plateau of Saint Acheul, the scene of the earliest discoveries that revealed the page 234existence of man in Quaternary times; and the station of Concise, on Lake Neuchâtel, which is one of the most ancient in Switzerland, yielded a yet more considerable number. Many have, however, been lost or destroyed; the ballast of the railway skirting the lake contains thousands of worked stones and of pieces of the waste left in making them, all of which were taken from the bed of the lake. It must not be forgotten that it is only of late years that the importance of these relics of the past has been recognized and that any one has dreamt of preserving or of studying them. The excavation of a gravel pit at Dundrum (County Down, Ireland) yielded 1,100 flint implements, and M. Belluci himself picked up in the province of Pérouse more than 17,000 pieces, chiefly spear-, lance-, or arrow-heads, belonging to six different types. The Broholm Museum contains 72,409 weapons and implements, all found in Denmark. We can quote similar facts in other countries. Prehistoric stations are numerous in the Sahara and throughout the Wady el Mya, in Algeria, and we have already spoken of the numerous specimens found near Wargla. The workshops in this district are generally surrounded by immense numbers of ostrich eggs, which seem to indicate that that bird was already domesticated.1 In America, Dr. Abbott has sent to the Peabody Museum more than 20,000 stones, which were collected by him at Trenton, on the banks of the Delaware, and quite recently I was told that in sinking a well in Illinois the workmen came upon a deposit of more than 1,000 worked flints, all of oval form. Every one knows the importance of the recent discoveries at page 235Washington, and we might multiply examples ad infinitum, for everywhere explorers come upon undoubted traces of the active work and intelligence of comparatively dense populations, all of whom had attained to about the same degree of development. These numerous deposits often mark the, site of regular workshops, tokens of the earliest attempt at social organization. In no other way can we explain the piles of flints in every stage of workmanship lying beside the lumps from which they were detached. One of the most celebrated of these workshops is that of Grand-Pressigny, chief town of the canton of the department of Indre-et-Loire, which is admirably situated between two picturesque rivers, the Claise and the Creuse. The flint implements of Grand-Pressigny, of which specimens can be seen in all the museums of Europe, are some sixteen inches long, of light color, pointed at one end and square at the other. One face is rough, the other chipped into three oblong pieces, whilst the sides are roughly hewn into saw-like teeth. If we examine these flints closely we can easily make out the exact point, the eye, as workmen call it, where the stone was struck. At Charbonnière, on the banks of the Saône, to quote other examples, in a radius of less than a mile, were found weapons, tools, and nuclei, which may be compared with those of Grand-Pressigny. In some places the collections of flints still remaining look as if they had been used for road-making. In some cases hatchets, knives, and scrapers seem to have been buried in pits. Were these the reserve stores of the tribe, or the so-called caches of the merchants?page 236 It is difficult merely to name the different workshops or manufactories discovered in the last few years. We must, however, endeavor to mention the most important, for these workshops, we must repeat, are an important proof of the existence of a society of organized working communities. We meet with them on the shores of the bay of Kiel, in the island of Anholt, in the midst of the Kattegat, and on the borders of the Petchoura, and of the Soula, among the Samoieds. Virchow discovered an arrow-head manufactory on the shores of Lake Burtneek, and in 1884 the Moscow Society of Natural Sciences made known the existence of important workshops near the Vetluga River, in the province of Kostroma, so that we know that in remote prehistoric times men lived and fought in a rigorous climate in districts but sparsely populated in our own day. There is nothing to surprise us in all these facts. Recently near the Yenesei River, in the heart of Siberia, were found bronze daggers, hatchets and bridle bits (Fig. 71), all bearing witness in the beauty of their workmanship to a more advanced state of civilization than the Lake Dwellings or megalithic monuments farther south. Many of them are ornamented with figures of animals, so that at an epoch less remote, it is true, than the one we have been considering, but still far removed from our own, we find that there was an intelligent race, with artistic tastes, living in a country now so intensely cold as to be uninhabitable to all but a few miserable nomad Tartars. At Spiennes, near Mons, a field was discovered, known as the camp des cayaux, strewn with flints, some uncut, others hewn, together with knives and hatchets innumerable. There were also centres of page 237manufacture at Hoxne and Brandon, in England, at Bellaria in Bologna, and at Rome on the Tiburtine Way. At Ponte-Molle, where worked flints were discovered for the first time in Italy a few years ago, a workshop was found, remarkable for the great number of stags` antlers, from which the middle part had been removed, doubtless to be used as handles for tools. M. de Rossi, who gives us these details, thinks that this station was inhabited in the Paleolithic period. In the settlement of Concise have been found not only stone implements, but a great many articles made of bone, so that this place was evidently an important manufacturing centre. Knives, stilettos, and arrow heads were turned out here, and in the hands of skilful workmen the tusks of the boars, which abounded at this time in Switzerland, were converted into excellent chisels. To name the districts where tools were manufactured in prehistoric times in France would be to give a list of all the departments. In the commune of Saint-Julien du Saut we find a large manufactory where every division of the Stone age is fully represented, from the time of the simply chipped hatchet to that of the polished implement of rare perfection. Everything bears witness to the prolonged residence of ... - tailieumienphi.vn