Man.
At this point, before we deal with the arrival in Britain of the representatives of the early races, it should be noted that differences of opinion exist among scientists regarding the geological horizons of the Palæolithic culture stages. In the Pleistocene Age there appear to have been four great glacial epochs and two minor ones. Geological opinion is, however, divided in this connection.
WESTERN EUROPE DURING THE THIRD INTER-GLACIAL EPOCH
(According to the Abbé Breuil the Strait of Gibraltar was open and the Balearic group a great island.)
During the First Glacial epoch the musk-ox, now found in the Arctic regions, migrated as far south as Sussex. The Pliocene9 mammals were not, however, completely exterminated; many of them survived until the First Interglacial epoch, which lasted for about 75,000 years—that is three times longer than the First Glacial epoch. The Second Glacial epoch is believed to have extended over 25,000 years. It brought to the southern shores of the Baltic Sea the reindeer and the hairy mammoth. Then came the prolonged Second Interglacial stage which prevailed for about 200,000 years. The climate of Europe underwent a change until it grew warmer than it is at the present day, and trees, not now found farther north than the Canary Islands, flourished in the forests of southern France. The Third Glacial stage gradually came on, grew in intensity, and then declined during a period estimated at about 25,000 years. It was followed by the Third Interglacial epoch which may have extended over at least 100,000 years. African animals returned to Europe and mingled with those that wandered from Asia and the survivors in Europe of the Second Interglacial fauna. The Fourth Glacial epoch, which is believed to have lasted for about 25,000 years, was very severe. All the African or Asiatic mammals either migrated or became extinct with the exception of lions and hyænas, and the reindeer found the western plains of Europe as congenial as it does the northern plains at the present time.
During the Fourth Post-glacial epoch there were for a period of about 25,000 years10 partial glaciations and milder intervals, until during the Neolithic Age of the archæologists the climate of Europe reached the phase that at present prevails.
When, then, did man first appear in Europe? According to some geologists, and especially Penck and James Geikie, the Chellean phase of culture originated in the Second Interglacial epoch and the Mousterian endured until the Third Interglacial stage, when the Neanderthals witnessed the arrival of the Crô-Magnon peoples. Boule, Breuil, and others, however, place the pre-Chellean, Chellean, Acheulian, and early Mousterian stages of Lower (or Early) Palæolithic culture in the Third Interglacial epoch, and fix the extermination of Neanderthal man, in his late Mousterian culture stage, at the close of the Fourth Glacial epoch. This view is now being generally accepted. It finds favour with the archæologists, and seems to accord with the evidence they have accumulated. The Upper Palæolithic culture of Crô-Magnon man, according to some, began in its Aurignacian phase about 25,000 years ago; others consider, however, that it began about five or six thousand years ago, and was contemporaneous with the long pre-Dynastic civilization of Egypt. At the time England was connected with the Continent by a land-bridge, and as the climate grew milder the ancestors of modern man could walk across from France to the white cliffs of Dover which were then part of a low range of mountains. As will be shown, there is evidence that the last land movement in Britain did not begin until about 3000 b.c.
CHAPTER III
The Age of the "Red Man" of Wales
An Ancient Welshman—Aurignacian Culture in Britain—Coloured Bones and Luck Charms—The Cave of Aurignac—Discovery at Crô-Magnon Village—An Ancient Tragedy—Significant Burial Customs—Crô-Magnon Characters—New Race Types in Central Europe—Galley Hill Man—The Piltdown Skull—Ancient Religious Beliefs—Life Principle in Blood—Why Body-painting was practised—"Sleepers" in Caves—Red Symbolism in different Countries—The Heart as the Seat of Life—The Green Stone Talisman—"Soul Substance".
The earliest discovery of a representative of the Crô-Magnons was made in 1823, when Dr. Buckland explored the ancient cave-dwelling of Paviland in the vicinity of Rhossilly, Gower Peninsula, South Wales. This cave, known as "Goat's Hole", is situated between 30 and 40 feet above the present sea-level, on the face of a steep sandstone cliff about 100 feet in height; it is 60 feet in length and 200 feet broad, while the roof attains an altitude of over 25 feet. When this commodious natural shelter was occupied by our remote ancestors the land was on a much lower level than it is now, and it could be easily reached from the sea-shore. Professor Sollas has shown that the Paviland cave-dwellers were in the Aurignacian stage of culture, and that they had affinities with the tall Crô-Magnon peoples on the Continent.11
A human skeleton of a tall man was found in the cave deposit in association with the skull and tusks of a hairy mammoth, and with implements of Aurignacian type. Apparently the Aurignacian colonists had walked over the land-bridge connecting England with France many centuries before the land sank and the Channel tides began to carve out the white cliffs of Dover.
In his description of the bones of the ancient caveman, who has been wrongly referred to as the "Red Lady of Paviland", Dr. Buckland wrote:
"They were all of them stained superficially with a dark brick-red colour, and enveloped by a coating of a kind of ruddle, composed of red micaceous oxide of iron, which stained the earth, and in some parts extended itself to the distance of about half an inch around the surface of the bones. The body must have been entirely surrounded or covered over at the time of its interment with this red substance."
Near the thighs were about two handfuls of small shells (Nerita litoralis) which had evidently formed a waist girdle. Over forty little rods of ivory, which may have once formed a long necklace, lay near the ribs. A few ivory rings and a tongue-shaped implement or ornament lay beside the body, as well as an instrument or charm made of the metacarpal bone of a wolf.
The next great discovery of this kind was made twenty-nine years later. In 1852 a French workman was trying to catch a wild rabbit on a lower slope of the Pyrenees, near the town of Aurignac in Haute Garonne, when he made a surprising find. From the rabbit's burrow he drew out a large human bone. A slab of stone was subsequently removed, and a grotto or cave shelter revealed. In the debris were found portions of seventeen skeletons of human beings of different ages and both sexes. Only two skulls were intact.
Upper Palæolithic Implements
1, Aurignacian (Chatelperron point). 2, 3, Aurignacian (keeled scrapers). 4, Aurignacian point. 5, Magdalenian ("parrot-beak" graving tool). 6, Solutrean (laurel-leaf point). 7, 8, 9, Solutrean (drill, awl, and "shouldered" point). 10, 11, 12, Magdalenian.
This discovery created a stir in the town of Aurignac, and there was much speculation regarding the tragedy that was supposed to have taken place at some distant date. A few folks were prepared to supply circumstantial details by connecting the discovery with vague local traditions. No one dreamt that the burial-place dated back a few thousand years, or, indeed, that the grotto had really been a burial-place, and the mayor of the town gave instructions that the bones should be interred in the parish cemetery.
Eight years elapsed before the grotto was visited by M. Louis Lartet, the great French archæologist. Outside the stone slab he found the remains of an ancient hearth, and a stone implement which had been used for chipping flints. In the outer debris were discovered, too, the bones of animals of the chase, and about a hundred flint artifacts, including knives, projectiles, and sling-stones, besides bone arrows, tools shaped from reindeer horns, and an implement like a bodkin of roe-deer horn. It transpired that the broken bones of animals included those of
The last division of the Tertiary period.
It must be borne in mind that the lengths of these periods are subject to revision. Opinion is growing that they were not nearly so long as here stated.
