Chapter XIII: The Guadaloupe Human Fossil 159 (3)

Long long ago too, before there was a single brick where London stands, and when the few human beings who were living were obliged to hide themselves in caves, great lions might have been heard roaring at night in the forests of the Thames Valley. The bones of this lion have been found in many different parts of England, and a terrible fellow he must have been, for some of his canine teeth (the long sharp teeth in cats and dogs) were more than six inches long. Indeed they were like small swords, and this is why he has been called the “sabre-toothed” lion. There were also bears, like the great grisly bear of America, and leopards, hyenas, and wolves, and besides two kinds of ox far larger than those we have now. But one of the handsomest animals was the great Irish stag. When standing upright the top of his horns would be as high as two tall men. He was indeed a fine fellow with his immense spreading antlers. The deer in our parks would look dwarfs beside him. He inhabited both England and Ireland: but, being found more often in Ireland, he has got the name of the _Irish_ stag. As many as thirty of the skeletons of these stags have been found together under a bog in Ireland, and in some of the bones the marrow is still preserved, and they burn well. Fences have been made of these bones in Ireland, and when the people of a small village in the county of Antrim heard of the battle of Waterloo they made a great bonfire of the bones and horns of the Irish stag to rejoice over the victory. I dare say these stags were hunted by wolves, and perhaps driven on to the ice of ancient lakes, where they broke through and got drowned, for so many of their skeletons are found together. I could not pass this magnificent stag by without giving you a picture of him.[17] He was a much nobler looking animal than the reindeer, which lived along with him at the time in England, and from his appearance I should say he was a swift runner and great fighter. Some antlers have been found locked together, just as these stags died in mortal combat, and I never see Sir Edwin Landseer’s beautiful picture of two red-deer stags fighting without thinking what a grand sight it would have been to see two of these great Irish stags rushing at each other with their powerful horns.

Not one of those animals is living now, and none of them is mentioned in any history or tradition whatever, and though there is no doubt that men living in Europe saw the mammoth alive (as you will find in the next chapter), they knew of no kind of writing in which to tell us of them; these fossils are the only records left, but they speak plainly enough of the time when England and the whole of Europe were inhabited by these races of huge animals.

_The Megatherium._]

Now I must carry you away to South America, where there are more wonders. If I were to tell you of all the singular monsters people have found in the beds of the rivers there it would make a book of itself. You know what large rivers there are in that country, and how they run for thousands of miles through almost flat plains called “Pampas.” Well, these rivers have often changed their beds by cutting new channels in the soft soil. The old dry beds of the rivers are the burying-places of some most curious animals, but I have not room to tell you about more than one of them at present. He is called the _Megatherium_, which means “great beast.” His size and strength were enormous. The largest hippopotamus looks small by his side. His leg bones are bigger than your body. He was more like the sloth than any other living animal, but he could not climb. He stood on those huge, broad hind feet, with his strong tail as a sort of third leg, and tore down the branches of the trees to feed on, or even rooted them up to get at the leaves. Standing by his skeleton in the British Museum[18] one feels quite a shrimp, and he looks strong enough to walk away comfortably with an elephant on his back.

Another immense animal inhabited South America at the time, which geologists have called _Dinotherium_, or “dreadful beast.”[19] He was a relation of the mastodon, but his tusks were very curious. Instead of being in the upper jaw and turned upwards they stuck out from the lower jaw and curved downwards, giving him a very odd appearance. He most probably had a trunk like the mammoth or mastodon, but perhaps not so long. All these of course were vegetable feeders.

The Tertiary period is so remarkable for the numbers of animals more or less related to elephants and spread all over the world, that we might almost call it the “elephant age,” as the oolite has been named the “reptile age.” These elephantine animals abounded in Europe, Asia, and North and South America, and though none of this kind have yet been found in Australia and Africa, I cannot help thinking they will be discovered in Africa at all events, for there is no doubt that Africa and Europe were once joined.

Australia you know possesses that animal so unlike all others that when we first see it we are quite astonished—the kangaroo. The bones of a huge fossil kangaroo have been found in Australia which must have stood fourteen or fifteen feet high I should think when on its hind legs, or more than twice as large as any living now.[20] Then there were giant birds in New Zealand (something like the ostrich) called _dinornis_ or “dreadful bird.” These fellows had no wings, and they must have been very much taller than the ostrich or emu. To look at their leg bones you would think they were the bones of oxen instead of birds, they are so immensely thick and strong. I do not think any of these are living now, because they have been sought for carefully, and none of the natives even can say that they have seen one. But their skeletons are common in the surface earth, and their bones, cracked to get the marrow out of them, are often dug out of the heaps of refuse collected about ancient cooking places. So that they were used for food, and perhaps they have not been extinct—that is to say, died out—more than a few hundred years; and this is more likely because feathers are sometimes attached to the remains, and undecayed sinews on the feet. A human skeleton has been found in a grave in New Zealand, too, with the egg of one between its arms, and little piles of pebbles are often seen among their bones, where the stomach would be, which the bird swallowed to digest its food, just as many birds do now. The natives called it the Moa, and they have some traditions about it, and, all things considered, it is probably one of the most recent fossil animals, and that is the reason why I have left it to the last.[21]

Now I dare say you will wish to know when the animals living now took the place of those I have described, and which have all passed away. This cannot be told with certainty, but you will see in the “Human Part” that Men were living when the mammoth, mastodon, and some other extinct animals, inhabited the Earth, and that the reindeer, ox, bear, wolf, hyena, &c., have survived to the present day.

Throughout these immense periods of time there are gaps which we cannot yet fill up. No one can yet say, for instance, when the last of the mammoths disappeared, and the first of their near relations, the Indian and African elephants, took their place. These are the missing parts of “the puzzle of life” which you may perhaps one of these days find when you come to study the subject, and when you have learned all that is known at present. But you may be sure of this, that throughout all time there has been _progress_, the lower forms of animal life have been followed by more perfect forms as the Earth grew older. It is true the lower forms of life have not all died out. These imperfect animals have run through all the ages—the chalk builder of the Cretaceous age lives in the ocean now—and there are many other simple animals which lived in Old Red Sandstone times, and are not extinct yet, but wherever a superior kind of animal has passed away another more perfect has taken its place. This will be seen at once if we compare the “Reptile Age” with the Tertiary. The great ichthyosaurus, plesiosaurus, and pterodactyl are gone, but now we have the more perfect crocodiles and birds. The mammoth is gone, but we have the elephant. There are no giant mosses or towering tree ferns, but our forest trees are more perfect and more varied. The plants which formed the coal forests and once clothed the Earth with beauty have dwindled away to the lowly forms which we must stoop to examine in swamps, and these humble plants are all the surviving relatives of their once noble family. The lordly oaks and elms, stronger, and even more lovely in the sweet drapery of their foliage, and much better fitted for our use, have succeeded all those soft-stemmed plants which grew so fast and were the best possible kind for forming coal.

When you are able to study what is called comparative anatomy you will see how wonderful the _plan_ of creation is, and how beautifully it has been worked out by its great Designer. You will see in the bones of the reptiles of the oolite rocks a prophecy as it were of the birds and animals which were to come. What could be more prophetic of animals with the power of perfect flight than the leather-winged pterodactyl, half lizard and half bird? In some of these animals you will see bones only half formed, and useless to that creature, which were brought to perfection in later times, and became the most important part of the body.

It is very difficult for me to make all this plain to you, but if you are really interested in it you will go to a museum where the fossils are collected, and then I am very much mistaken if you do not find a new and strange world opened to you.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] Numerous specimens in Case No. 7, Room V.

[8] Specimens of fossil fishes from various rocks in Wall-case No. 1, Room II.

[9] See examples in the large Wall-cases in Rooms I., II., and III., North Gallery.

[10] So called because the mountain chain of the Jura Alps was raised during this period.

[11] Several specimens in Room III., and in Table-case No. 16, Room IV.

[12] Wall-case No. 11 in Room III., several specimens, imperfect.

[13] From the Latin word “creta,” meaning chalk.

[14] Ammonites in the Table-cases in Rooms V. and VI. For enlarged models of foraminifera, see Case No. 15 in Room V.

[15] Room VI., North Gallery.

[16] In the same room.

[17] Complete specimens of male and female in the middle of Room V.

[18] Room VI.

[19] Head and tusks in Wall-case No. 2, Room VI.

[20] Skull in Wall-case No. 1, Room VI.

[21] Several specimens in Wall-case No. 11, Room III.

_THE HUMAN PART._

The history of the human race is of course even more interesting than that of the plants and animals which lived so long before man and prepared the way for him, because man is the “crown of creation.”

When first placed on this Earth he must have been but little superior to the animals in his outward life, though he had very different powers within him. He could gather the fruits of the Earth like them, and perhaps used some of the smaller creatures as food, but he could do little more. He scarcely knew that he possessed the faculties which would in time make him lord of the Earth and the creatures inhabiting it. By slow and painful experience he was to gather those stores of knowledge that were to enable him to overcome difficulties, to provide him with shelter from the weather and protection from dangerous animals, give increasing comfort and power, and set him so far above all other created things. He found plants and animals for his use, and the dwellings in caves and holes ready made by Nature. He could neither build houses nor make weapons. The first weapon he ever used probably was a stone, which he could throw at small animals. Then he would find out that long, sharp-pointed sticks could be thrown like spears, and he also found that a long pliant piece of wood when bent would fly back, and in this he would see a means of throwing smaller pointed sticks like arrows, and I dare say the discovery of the way of making a bow with a string of twisted animal skin was a great invention, and it certainly would be a very valuable one. Many generations must have passed away before he got even as far as this. It is very easy for us, who see bows and arrows from our childhood, to understand their use at once: but the first human inhabitants of the world had to find them out for themselves. They began with _no_ knowledge at all. The beasts of the field and the fruits of the Earth were given them, but they could MAKE nothing. They had not even the natural covering of hair, or wool, or feathers, which animals and birds have, and they must first have clothed themselves with skins of these. The wants of their daily life were so great that they had no time to think of anything else, but when it became easier to satisfy these bodily wants their minds turned to other things. They must have seen that when the seeds and fruits of plants fall upon the ground they grow and produce the same kind of plant, but they did not at first think of gathering a great number of these seeds and sowing them in one place and making a garden. They could wander about and gather all they needed as they became ripe, for there were few people then. Their life was like that of the lilies of the field, they “toiled not neither did they spin,” as Christ says of the flowers, but when they began to increase in number something more was wanted. People began to feel something within them which we call “intellect,” and this must be satisfied. It was not enough to live as if they were no nobler than the animals. Something stirred in their minds which told them they must not stand still.

The Creator has made both us and the wood and stone and metals, and has given to us the power to make other things out of them. Thus we are nearer to Him in power than any of the animals who cannot change the rough materials into other forms. We admire the simple and really beautiful nest of the bird, but we feel that our power is greater when we consider our splendid buildings and steam-engines, our ships, and our many conquests over difficulties. But if we did not use these greater powers of mind and hand well, we should find them grow weaker and weaker until we might almost lose them.

You may easily suppose that there was a time when men could not write, and there were no books of any kind, nor any other means of exchanging thoughts except through spoken language. The earliest histories about the human race always speak of men who lived before those histories were written. We have nothing about the earliest men written by _themselves_. It is always someone else who writes of them, referring to their deeds, and to events which happened long before.

The art of writing has grown up gradually and very slowly, for when the inhabitants of the Earth became numerous they felt the need of some way of expressing themselves to those at a distance from them, and for making a record of things that happened and might be forgotten. Some of the earliest means of writing were by pictures, like the picture writings of Mexico[22] found by the Spanish conquerors, and something of the same kind is even now used by the Chinese and Japanese. Their writing is made up partly of pictures and partly of queer signs which stand for the names of things, as you know if you have ever seen one of their books. One of the oldest forms of writing known is the hieroglyphic, which is said to have been first used by the Egyptians about 2,100 years before Christ, and another is the arrow-shaped writing of the Assyrians. These were cut on stone and metal tablets, and most of them are the histories of their kings. But there are some writings on stone in India which are thought to be older still. The Egyptians made great progress in writing afterwards when _papyrus_ was invented.[23] This is a kind of paper made from a reed which grows abundantly in the river Nile, and many of these papyrus writings are preserved in the British Museum, as well as the writings on stone of the Egyptians and Assyrians, and learned men have spelled out a great deal of the history of these nations from them, though the language is quite different from any spoken or written now.

Picture writing was most likely one of the earliest inventions in this way: but it was so troublesome that signs were used to express the same things as the picture. For instance, suppose a history of a king was to be written. The word “king” would be shown by something he always wore, such as his crown, and this sign would become more simple until at last it might not be anything like a crown; but it would be remembered that the sign stood for a king all the same. The first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, _aleph_, means an ox, and the letter is something like the shape of the head of that animal with its horns; and another letter, called _shin_, which in Hebrew means a tooth, is actually very like a tooth with three points. In many languages these signs have become so altered that they do not now resemble the things they at first stood for; but the first steps in the invention of written language were certainly made by signs representing the thing of which the person wished to give an idea. But you will learn all about these ancient writings from other books.

The men whose lives I am going to describe lived long before any of these writings were invented. They _spoke_ a language of course, though there is nothing left to show that they knew of any kind of writing, and they are called Pre-historic men because they lived before there were any histories either written by themselves or about them. But they could draw a little, as we know from the pictures of animals, birds, and fishes scratched upon pieces of slate, and bone, and stone found in their graves. Perhaps these pictures were memorials of their great or wise men, or showed that they were clever hunters, or fishermen.

They knew the use of fire. Half burnt bones and wood and ashes are plentiful in the caves where they lived. They had none of the means we possess for kindling fire, and there are only two ways by which they could have got it. They might have rubbed two pieces of very dry wood together until the heat lighted them, as many savages do at the present time; or they might have struck sparks from flint upon rotten wood and blown the spark into a flame. We may be sure that when once a fire was lighted they would take care it did not go out, and if they wanted to travel they would carry with them a piece of smouldering wood to light the fire again. I do not suppose that these pre-historic men were any more civilized than the savages of Australia and other countries, and I have often thought when looking at these savages that they live in almost exactly the same way as the earliest inhabitants of Europe did. They have the same shaped weapons and tools made of stone, and these are fixed to the handles in the same way. They have the same kinds of needles and fish-hooks made of bone, and they sew skins together with threads made from the sinews of animals. Thus we see men living now in many parts of the world who are quite as uncivilized as the old inhabitants of Europe, who lived perhaps thousands of years before the Egyptians and Assyrians.

These very ancient men knew nothing about metals. All their tools were made of flint, or bone, or stone, and they were of the rough shape you see in the pictures on the next page, and it is for this reason that this has been called the _Stone Age_. These were chipped out with great trouble and labour, and most of them were not even polished. With these they had to kill animals for food, to cut down trees, and fight against their enemies. The skeleton of a mastodon was found in the state of Missouri in America about thirty-five years ago with numbers of these flint arrow-heads underneath and near it. Perhaps it had been shot at with arrows, and when it died the flint points fell out of its decaying flesh. But it is not likely that these pre-historic men could have killed many such large animals, unless they caught them in pits covered over with branches of trees and earth, into which they might fall, as elephants are sometimes caught in Africa.

1. _Flint Arrow-head._
2. _Stone Axe in handle._
3. _Flint Knife._
4. _Bone Harpoon._
5. _Bone Needles._
6. _Sceptre made of Horn._
7. _Marrow Spoon._]

Nothing shows us so well the immense time which must have passed since the men of the stone age lived as that these flint weapons and tools are found nearly all over the world, in Northern Europe, including our own country, in Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Palestine, Africa, Japan, America, &c.; and yet none of the present inhabitants of these countries have any history or tradition of the time when they were used. Metals are now used instead, and there is no record of the time when flint only was known. We are quite certain however that the stone age men lived at the same period as the great animals of the Tertiary age, the mammoth, the mastodon, the woolly rhinoceros, the Irish stag, the cave bear, and others you have read of in former chapters, because flint and stone weapons are found in the same beds of earth with these animals.[24]

Suppose one of the present Indian or African elephants with his rider were to fall into a river and they were to sink to the bottom and be covered with mud, and suppose his rider had in his pocket some of our sovereigns. If that elephant should be accidentally dug up thousands of years to come, when most likely all elephants will have died off the earth, people would know for certain, from the date and figure of the Queen on the money, that elephants were used by the English in this reign, even if all our books and monuments had perished, and a new people inhabited the Earth. Something of the same kind has happened to prove to us that the stone-age men saw the mammoth alive. In one of their graves there is a slice of a mammoth’s great back tooth with a beautiful picture of the animal, with his bristly hair, scratched on the ivory, and there are also many of the flint and stone weapons which show that the skeleton in the grave was that of a primeval man. This little picture tells its tale more faithfully than any history. It is all the more certain to tell it truly because it was never _meant_ to tell one. When that man was buried with this sign that he was a mighty hunter of the mammoth, or an artist, no one could imagine that he would ever be dug up to show us, who come so long afterwards, that he saw the mammoth roaming through the forests of the far away past. There can be no doubt that it is a very good drawing of the mammoth with its long turned-up tusks, like those in the picture at the beginning of the book.

In another place a picture of a fight between some reindeer scratched upon a piece of slate has been found. This was in a cave in France, and it, as well as the numbers of bones of these animals in the caves, shows that the reindeer, which now only inhabits the Arctic regions, must have been common then in France. You will see drawings of both these on page 135.

These primeval people built no houses. They lived in natural caves, and scattered the remains of their food about the floor, so that we know what they ate. Among the animals they used for food were the horse, the reindeer, the ox, the cave-lion and bear, the wolf, the hyena, the goat, the hare and several others, besides salmon and other fish. They were very fond of the marrow of the bones, which they cracked with stone hammers, and had little spoons made of bone with which to pick it out.

They had places for making flint weapons too. At Cissbury Camp, near Worthing, there is one of their old workshops. There are galleries dug into the chalk where they got the flints, and there are thousands of chips of flint lying about, with half finished arrow-heads, and some of the tools they dug with. They had no spades or pickaxes; but they used the broad, flat, shoulder-blade bone of the ox as a spade, and the sharp brow antler of a deer’s horn for a pickaxe, to get these flints out with. It must have been very hard work for them, because bone spades and horn pickaxes would soon wear out, and would not be nearly so useful as ours made of iron.

_Picture of Mammoth Scratched on Ivory._

_Fight between Reindeer Scratched on Slate._]

It is difficult to be certain how these stone-age people cooked their food. Of course they could have roasted it, and the half-burnt bones in some caves show that they did so; but in some caves in France there is not a single burnt bone to be found. In these French cave dwellings, too, there are no pieces of earthenware, as there are in some others; so that the people could not have boiled it, unless they had wooden pots and dropped red-hot stones into the water in them until the meat got boiled, as some savages do now. Or they might have cooked it under the hot ashes.

The people who used earthenware must have made more progress. It is easy to understand how they made this useful discovery. Suppose they had lighted a fire upon a damp clay soil, the earth would get baked hard and crack off in pieces, and they would see that this soil could be worked in the hands while soft into the shape of pans and dishes, which could be dried quite hard in the sun or baked in hot ashes, just as boys make clay marbles now. They could live much more comfortably even with these rough earthenware things, and cook their food more conveniently; but they still used the stone and flint tools and weapons, and iron was still unknown to them.

The people of whom I have been speaking are principally the men of the First Stone Age, when the art of polishing tools and weapons had not been found out. They simply chipped these things out of the flints and left them very rough; but the men of the next, or Second Stone Age, made great improvements. They ground their flint knives and axes with other stones, and rubbed them down to sharp edges and points, so that they must have been much more useful for killing and cutting up the animals they hunted. All their bone and horn tools are much better made, and sometimes ornamented prettily with marks cut upon them. The Second Stone Age men evidently wore clothing, most probably made of the skins of animals—for the long strips of bone with a hole at one end which you see in the picture could not have been used for any other purpose, except to draw threads through something. The threads were very likely either the sinews of animals pulled out of the flesh, or thin strips of their skins, or perhaps the inner bark of a tree twisted into a kind of string. In the colder parts of Europe and America these ancient people would need some protection from the weather. How then did the people of the First Stone Age manage, if they had no bone needles, as I think they had not, with which to make clothing? They must have wrapped themselves in the skins just as they came from the backs of the animals.

It is not easy to be always sure, when we find a cave and all these relics of pre-historic man, whether the inhabitants belonged to the First or the Second Stone Age. Sometimes there are signs of polishing and grinding on the tools, and then we may suppose that men were gradually getting more skilful, until they finished off all their weapons beautifully. But there is such a very great difference in the perfection of these useful articles found in some places and those found in others that we have no doubt men made slow progress, from the rough or First Stone Age, to the polished or Second Stone Age.

In neither the first nor second stone period had men yet learned to build any kind of habitations. They lived in caves simply, like wild animals. On the banks of the river Vezère in France, which has cut its way deeply through the rock, there are some celebrated caves once inhabited by pre-historic men, and some of them are very large. They were most likely hollowed out in the cliff by water, and many generations of men lived here. In one of them four human skeletons were found, with plenty of stone and flint tools, besides the bones of the mammoth and lion, reindeer and other animals. The mammoth then as well as the reindeer lived at that time in the valley of the Vezère. There is no doubt that these caves were inhabited at separate times by people who used only the roughest and simplest stone tools, and by others who had made some progress and could polish their tools and make them of bone and could scratch pictures of animals upon slips of bone and slate. It is curious that all these drawings are side-view drawings, and they are only outlines, just like the drawings of children now, and the Esquimaux of the Arctic regions; because these people, although they were grown up, had not discovered the art of drawing in perspective and shading the figures. Still the pictures are wonderfully true to nature, and must have been copied from living animals. There is no earthenware in any of these caves, so that the useful art of making pottery had not been discovered, neither is there any in the caves in Switzerland, where the bones of the mammoth, lion, and rhinoceros are also found, and the tools and weapons are much the same as those in the French caverns. It is impossible to say whether the cave-dwellers of France and Switzerland lived at the same time exactly, but they were in about the same condition of civilization, and they must both have been quite familiar with the appearance of the mammoth and lion, and other animals, which are not mentioned in any history, however old it may be, as inhabitants of these countries.

A discovery has lately been made in France of a large cavern near Belfort, in the limestone rock, which has been covered up for ages. The quarrymen while cutting out the stone came upon a small opening leading into a very large cave, in which there was a great quantity of human skeletons and bones and some beautifully ornamented vases, polished stone bracelets, and a mat of plaited rushes. To these people, then, the arts of pottery and weaving were known, and this was probably one of their burying-places. They were evidently much more civilized than the ancient people of the valley of the Vezère; but this cave must also be of a great age, and its inhabitants have left no record of their history in any kind of writing.

Quite lately, too, we have learned something of the early races of man in Colorado. Many of the caves in that country have been altered and made more like regular houses, and some appear even to have been cut out of the rock entirely by human hands; and in the plains there are ruins of large cities.

Though still in the stone age, for all the weapons yet found among these ruins are of stone, the Colorado people were more civilized than the stone-age people of the Vezère caverns, because they had begun to build and knew how to make pottery. It is strange, too, that the present natives of Colorado are not so civilized as the early people, and if they have descended from them they have not improved, but rather the contrary. There are other caverns in various parts of the world containing these curious relics of races long since passed away, but some of the principal have been mentioned, enough perhaps to interest you and show you that men were living in Europe together with the large animals of the Tertiary period, and that they had made very little progress in the arts and manufactures, and had not even begun to build the roughest houses.

In many parts of the world even now there are savages nearly as uncivilized as the cave-dwellers of Europe were then. When Captain Cook visited New Zealand, more than a hundred years ago, the natives there had nothing but stone and bone tools, very like those found in the European caverns, and the inhabitants of some of the islands in the Pacific Ocean still use stone axes and hammers and bone needles.[25] Captain Moresby, too, who made a voyage to the south-east coast of New Guinea a few years ago, tells us that the natives have beautiful stone axes, but they were so ignorant of the use of iron that they refused to give him one of their stone axes for a new iron hatchet which he offered them. No doubt the stone weapon cost a great deal of labour and patience to make, and perhaps the iron one was made by machinery in a few minutes, and was really more useful, but the native had proved his own axe and knew nothing of the iron one, so that it is no wonder that he refused it. But what a history these two axes tell—the stone and the iron! The stone shows us man in his childhood, and the iron man in his manhood, and what an immensely long time there is between the two. How much thought, and trial and failure, and patience and industry, were spent by mankind before the stone axe grew into the iron!

In Europe man has long since grown out of his childhood, but in many parts of the world he is no more civilized than the men who saw the mammoth crashing through the forests of England and France, and heard the lion roar at night on the banks of the Thames, and watched the hippopotamus swimming across the river at Westminster. It is most likely, then, that Europe and parts of Asia and America were inhabited long before those places where men are even now in the stone age—such as the islands in the Pacific Ocean, New Guinea, Australia, &c.

What a life the pre-historic men of Europe must have lived! Here they were surrounded by huge dangerous animals, and had no means of protecting themselves against them but with these rough stone weapons. Where London now stands with its miles of streets and busy life there was a mighty forest, and the mammoth and rhinoceros tramped through it by day, and the lion and hyena hunted the deer at night. When the pre-historic men came down to the banks of the Thames in the day-time to spear salmon, they saw the hippopotamus plunging about in the water among the rushes, sweeping the long grass into their wide mouths, and swimming from side to side with their young ones perched upon their necks. It must have been a grand sight, but a fearful one too, and it is no wonder that men thought the caves the only safe places to live in.

Sometimes in India the elephants come into the villages at night and throw down wooden houses and kill people, and they are very much feared, so that we can suppose how much more terrible the mammoth might have been to the uncivilized cave-dwellers. If they shot at him with the flint-pointed arrows they could scarcely hurt him, and it is more likely that they got out of his way as quickly as possible whenever they met him, and took good care never to interfere with the lion and rhinoceros.

THE LAKE-DWELLERS.

Among the earliest inhabitants of Europe, there were some who did not live in caves; but I think they must have lived a long time after the cave-dwellers, when they built their houses out in the middle of the lakes. These houses were built in a very curious way, and the remains of them have been discovered in Ireland and Scotland, Switzerland and other countries. The people carried quantities of stones, and earth, and sticks out into the lake and let them sink to the bottom. Then when they had piled up enough to make an island, they laid wood across and set up their huts, and lived there surrounded by water. These were very poor houses of course; but when men had begun to build for themselves, they would find how much more comfortable they were than in damp and dark caves. They must have had some kind of boats or canoes, or they could not have passed between their lake-dwellings and the land unless they swam to them; but I do not think that any of these boats have been found. Perhaps they were made of the dried skins of animals stretched over wooden frames, as I have seen savages make boats.

_Lake-Dwellings._]

There was another way of building these lake-dwellings, and a better way too. Long poles were driven into the earth at the bottom of the water, and when the builders had got enough of these together they laid other poles across them, and built their huts on this floor above the water. People are living now in much the same way near the Orinoco river in South America, in New Guinea, and in Central Africa.[26] The land all round is covered with water from the overflowing of the rivers, which are very large, and the huts are built up on these poles out of the way of it. The lake-dwellers of Europe would thus be safer in their houses from dangerous animals than if they were on land. They were more civilized than the cave-dwellers, but still a great many of their tools and weapons were of stone and bone; yet we know that they had made wonderful progress, because they had learned to make pottery, and even to weave cloths out of hemp or flax. They had most likely begun to plant and cultivate the land, too, for corn is found about these dwellings, and the bones of domestic animals are very numerous. They had left the cave-dwellers a long way behind in many things, in wearing artificial clothing, in cultivating the land, and in keeping domestic animals; but their implements—that is, their weapons and tools—were not much improved, and were very much like those of the cave-dwellers, though better finished and more polished than some of theirs.

But not all the articles used by the lake people were of stone and bone. Some of those who lived in the Swiss lakes had ornaments, such as bracelets and hair-pins, made of the metal called bronze, and no doubt they made spear-heads of the metal, because they would look to usefulness before ornament.

Now you see how these people seem to have lived: first the old stone age men, then those of the newer or polished stone age, and lastly the lake-dwellers. The people of both the first and second stone ages certainly saw the mammoth, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, lion, and reindeer alive in France, Switzerland, and England; but when the lake-dwellings were built, all these animals, except perhaps the reindeer, had died, and most of the animals were the same as they are now. None of these people have left us any kind of history whatever, except that which their simple works tell us, their flint and bone weapons, and their dwellings. They have set up no gigantic monuments like the Egyptians or the Druids. They thought of no men to come after them who would take an interest in their ways; but it is fortunate that what they did make was of such lasting materials as stone and flint, or we should have known next to nothing about their lives.

It is impossible to say how many thousands of years may have passed before the rough stone weapons were replaced by the polished stone, or the cave was exchanged for an artificial house in a lake; but you must feel in your minds that the time was immense, and the more we study the ways and works of pre-historic man, the more certain we become that it is longer than the whole time that has passed since men first began to use any kind of writing.

KITCHEN-MIDDENS.

I dare say you have seen untidy people in country places, and even in towns, throw oyster-shells and broken dishes and dirt outside their doors until quite a heap is formed. This is called a “midden,” and the habit of doing this is a very old one. We learn just a little more of the history of man from great middens made by ancient people in several countries. They were first discovered in Denmark, and since then they have been found in Scotland, Brazil, and New Zealand. They are sometimes very large, and must have been used by the whole village as places to throw the refuse of their cookery in. When these heaps have been dug into all sorts of things have been found in them—the shells of oysters and mussels, bones of fishes, birds, and animals, pieces of broken earthenware, little ornaments, stone axes, arrow-heads, wood ashes, burnt bones, and other odds and ends. In Brazil many of these kitchen-middens are on the sea shore, and it seems as if the people who made them came there to live on the shell-fish, for the shells are the same as those living in the sea close by now. In New Zealand the middens contain many of the bones of the Moa, which was described in “The Animal Part,” and has now perished, and these are cracked in such a manner that the people evidently wanted to get at the marrow in them, and it shows too that this gigantic bird was common in New Zealand then. The midden makers seemed to have lived in the open air, and wherever food was most plentiful. Perhaps they built huts of the bark and small branches of trees like the Australian savages, but such houses would not last. We only know of the life of the midden makers from these heaps. Their weapons are of the same kind and pattern as those of the Second Stone Age, but they had learned to make rough earthenware dishes and basins, and some pieces of a woven material have been found, and pieces of wood and bone worked with a little skill. Whether they lived after or before the lake-dwellers I cannot say, but I should think about the same time.

These pre-historic people, nevertheless, were not always thinking of making things which were useful. They thought too of making ornaments, many of which are found in their dwellings and graves. Like ourselves, they had an idea that little trinkets improved their appearance. In one grave a skeleton was found with a small pile of shells under its neck, which no doubt had been strung together as a necklace, and when the string rotted the shells parted and fell in a heap under the head, to be a memorial of that ancient man or woman’s possession of the same feelings as our own. Various little articles, too, found about the lake-dwellings show that people liked to decorate themselves.

We shall never know what language they spoke, but they must have been able to tell their thoughts to one another. It was most likely a simple language with few words as names for things and a simple grammar, like the language of savages, because they had not so many things to talk about as we have. The names of animals would perhaps be imitated from their cries and the noises they made. These cries would be among the most familiar sounds to them, and when they wished to speak of some animal the simplest way would be to imitate the noise it generally makes. If we think of our own language, we shall see how very likely this was. We have many such words. We teach our children the names of animals by the sounds they make. The dog we call “bow-wow,” the cow “moo-moo,” the duck “quack-quack,” and many other names of the same kind which you will think of yourselves. At the present time even the name by which the Egyptians call the donkey has almost exactly the same sound as our “hee-haw.” This trick of doubling or repeating the sound, too, is very common among savages, who are as far behind us as the pre-historic men were. The natives of Australia give these double names to a great many animals and things, and sometimes do the same with English words. They call fish “ningy-ningy,” and a certain tree the “bunya-bunya,” and their language is full of such words. But it is not only the names of things which have been made in this way. Verbs as well as nouns have grown up thus. When we whisper to one another, that word imitates the low sound we make.

I shall leave you to trace the natural origin of the following words, and think how much of man’s spoken language is taken from common sounds. Thus we have roar, shriek, whistle, hiss, sigh, sing, ring, thump, bump, clash, clang, bang, twang, clap, smack, slap, smash, swish, swirl, gong, thong, boom, bellow, batter, chatter, clatter, snap, snip, whip, gurgle, shiver, quiver, rumble, roll, rattle, prattle, and a hundred more. Words thus derived from familiar sounds abound in all languages, and they, no doubt, are the easy steps by which men climbed to a more complicated speech. The earliest men must have been obliged to pay great attention to animals and birds, which have voices of their own; for to hunt and catch them was the principal occupation of their lives; therefore, when speaking of them to one another, they would naturally call them by names resembling the sounds they made. Our verbs “to squeak” and “to squeal” are certainly taken from the cries of animals when in pain; but I have said enough to show you how language grew up among pre-historic people.

We do not know for certain that they had any musical instruments, but they would hear the sighing of the wind among the trees, and it would almost certainly be found out that blowing down a hollow stick or reed, open at one end and closed at the other, would make a whistle; but if they used any of these things they would not last like the stone tools, and have decayed away; and we do know that they had begun to draw upon such imperishable materials as bone and slate.

There is a very interesting specimen of a human fossil in the British Museum, which you ought to go and see, if you can; but in case you are not able there is a drawing of it on page 159.[27] This specimen was brought to England about the year 1814. Others like it have since been found imbedded in the hard breccia limestone rock at the same place on the shore of the island of Guadaloupe. The skeleton most likely was that of a woman, from the shape of some of the bones, and most probably was of the race of Caribs, of whom there are none living now. Perhaps this was originally a burying place of the ancient inhabitants of the island, and when the sea washed the small broken pieces of shells and corals over it (all of which contain lime) they hardened into breccia rock, and the skeleton became completely imbedded in it. This must have taken a very long time, at all events; but I do not think the Guadaloupe fossils are as old as the people who lived in the caves in France. Some little ornaments and articles of human workmanship are found with these skeletons, which show that the people to whom they belonged were still in the Stone Age. There is very little to judge from when we wish to get some idea of the time these fossils have been in this breccia: but at this particular place the rock is formed pretty quickly, as we can see; and it is quite likely that these skeletons were buried there long after the mammoth, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus died out of Europe. However, they are the most complete specimens we have of any fossil human beings. In looking at the drawing you will see the leg bones and hips, part of the backbone, the ribs of one side, and an arm bone; but you see no skull, because the bones of the skull are very thin, and have become crushed down into the limestone. In one of these fossils, which they have in Paris, taken from near the same place, the bones are much more distinct, and part of the lower jaw with some teeth in it can be seen. These fossil men no doubt lived before the period of written human history began; but they are not considered to be at all the oldest of pre-historic men.

_The Guadaloupe Human Fossil._]

Two periods in the life of mankind followed all these long-lost and forgotten people, and they are called the Bronze Age and the Iron Age; but now _history_ comes in, and there are plenty of old records and books to tell you about these. Bronze is a mixed metal of copper and tin, and it was used by the oldest nations who have left any histories—the Egyptians, Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans. It was better than stone because it could be made sharper and would not chip, and swords and armour, vases, axes, hammers, needles, &c., were made of it.[28]

The Stone Age is beyond all history, the Bronze begins with it, and the Iron Age began at some distant time before the dawn of authentic history. Thus we are told, in Genesis iv. 22, that Tubal Cain taught people to make it. It was used also by the Egyptians for perhaps 2,000 years before the Christian era; but the real Iron Age is that in which we are living now. We can, indeed, make all metals much better than any of the older nations.

But there is a wide gap between the time when people left off using stone and discovered bronze and iron; and if one of the Druids could come to life he might help us to fill it up, because those old British priests had many secrets, which they told to one another from generation to generation.

If the Spanish conquerors had not destroyed the civilization of Mexico and Peru, we might know something of the discovery of the metals there, and the people of India and China must have used them long ago; but the first use of metal in any country where it was found out would most likely be before the people had begun to put their language into any kind of writing, so that the time would be forgotten among the many scraps of lost knowledge which we have tried to collect from the remains of the industry of pre-historic man.