William Boyd Dawkins

“ Prehistoric Caves of Neolithic Age in Europe.—The prehistoric caves are distinguished from Pleistocene by their containing the remains of domestic animals, and by the wild animals to which they have afforded shelter belonging to living species. They are divisible into three groups according to the traces of man which occur in them—into the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages.
The Neolithic caves are widely spread throughout Europe, and have been used as the habitations and tombs of the early races who invaded Europe from the East with their flocks and herds. ”

“ It is to a considerable extent confirmed by a consideration of the animals found in the caves. The reindeer and musk sheep afford food to the Eskimos now in the Arctic Circle, just as they afforded it to the cave-men in Europe; and both these animals have been traced by their remains from the Pyrenees to the north-east through Europe and Asia as far as the very regions in which they now live. The mammoth and bison also have been tracked by their remains in the frozen river gravels and morasses through Siberia as far as the American side of Bering Strait. ”

“ Caves have been used in all ages by mankind for habitation, refuge and burial. In the Old Testament we read that when Lot went up out of Zoar he dwelt in a cave with his two daughters. The five kings of the Canaanites took refuge from Joshua, and David from Saul, in the caves of Palestine, just as the Aquitani fled from Caesar to those of Auvergne, and the Arabs of Algeria to those of Dahra, where they were suffocated by Marshal Pelissier in 1845. ”

“ Those with the remains of the mammoth, woolly rhinoceros and other extinct species, or with paleolithic man (see Archaeology) , are termed Pleistocene. These are sometimes called Quaternary, under the mistaken idea that they belong to an age succeeding the Tertiary period. (3) Those which contain the remains of the domestic animals in association with the remains of man either in the Neolithic, Bronze or Iron stages of civilization are termed Prehistoric. ”

“ Caves formed by the action of carbonic acid and the action of water are distinguished from others by the following characters. They open on the abrupt sides of valleys and ravines at various levels, and are arranged round the main axes of erosion, just as the branches are arranged round the trunk of a tree. In a great many cases the relation of the valley to the ravine, and of the ravine to the cave, is so intimate that it is impossible to deny that all three have been produced by the same causes. ”

“ The riverdrift man, whose implements occur in river deposits in middle and southern Europe, in Africa, Palestine and Hindustan, is everywhere in the same age of primitive barbarism, and has not as yet been identified with any living race. ”

“ In Central Africa David Livingstone discovered vast caves in which whole tribes found security with their cattle and household stuff.
The cave of Machpelah may be quoted as an example of their use as sepulchres, and the rock-hewn tombs of Palestine and of Egypt and the Catacombs of Rome probably owe their existence to the ancient practice of burial in natural hollows in the rock. We might therefore expect to find in them most important evidence as to the ancient history of mankind, which would reach long beyond written record ”

“ These singular accumulations of débris mark the places where the ancient hunters lived, and are merely the refuse cast aside. The reindeer formed by far the greater portion of the food, and must have lived in enormous herds at that time in the centre of France. ”

“ There are refuse heaps in north-eastern Siberia containing the remains of the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros as well as the reindeer and musk sheep, which may be referred with equal justice to the cave-men or to the Eskimos. ”

“ It is, therefore, certain that the mammalian life in the Old, New and Australian worlds, was as well marked out into geographical provinces in the Pleistocene age as at the present time, and that it has been continuous in these areas from that remote time to the present day. ”

“ The old floors of human occupation consist of broken bones of animals killed in the chase, mingled with rude implements and weapons of bone and unpolished stone, and with charcoal and burnt stones, which indicate the position of the hearths. Flakes without number, awls, lance-heads, hammers and saws made of flint rest pêle-mêle with bone needles, sculptured reindeer antlers, arrowheads and harpoons, and bones of the reindeer, bison, horse, ibex, Saiga antelope and musk sheep. ”

“ If the direction of the drainage in the rock has been altered, either by elevations such as those with which the geologist is familiar, or by the opening out of new passages at a lower level, these watercourses become dry, and present us with the caves which have afforded shelter to man and the wild animals from the remotest ages, sometimes high up on the side of a ravine, at other times close to the level of the stream at the bottom. ”

“ The labours of Buckland, Pengelly, Falconer, Lartet and Christy, and Boyd Dawkins have added an entirely new chapter to the history of man in Europe, as well as established the changes that have taken place in the European fauna. The physical history of caves will be taken first, and we shall then pass on to the discoveries relating to man and the lower animals which have been made in them of late years. ”

“ The same conclusion may be gathered from the exploration of caves in the south of Europe, which has resulted in the discovery of African species, in Gibraltar, Sicily and Malta. In the first of these the spotted hyena, the serval and Kaffre cat lie side by side with the horse, grizzly bear and slender rhinoceros (R. leptorhinus) —see Falconer’s Palaeontographical Memoirs. To these African animals inhabiting the Iberian peninsula in the Pleistocene age, Lartet has added the African elephant and striped hyena, found in a stratum of gravel near Madrid, along with flint implements. ”

“ As man increased in civilization he preferred to live in houses of his own building, and he no longer buried his dead in the natural sepulchres provided for him in the rock.
Prehistoric caves have been rarely explored in extra-European areas. Among those which abound in Palestine, one in Mount Lebanon, examined by Canon Tristram, contained flint implements along with charcoal and broken bones and teeth, some of which may be referred to a small ox, undistinguishable from the small short-horn, Bos longifrons. ”

“ It is obvious in all these cases that men accustomed to luxury and refinement were compelled, by the pressure of some great calamity, to flee for refuge to caves with whatever they could transport thither of their property. ”

“ Physical History.—The most obvious agent in hollowing out caves is the sea. The set of the currents, the force of the breakers, the grinding of the shingle inevitably discover the weak places in the cliff, and leave caves as one of the results of their work, modified in each case by the local conditions of the rock. Those formed in this manner are easily recognized from their floors being rarely much out of the horizontal ”

“ From their inaccessible position they have been rarely occupied by man. Among them Fingal’s Cave, on the island of Staffa, off the south-west coast of Scotland, hollowed out of columnar basalt, is perhaps the most remarkable in Europe. In volcanic regions also there are caves formed by the passage of lava to the surface of the ground, or by the expansion of steam and gases in the lava while it was in a molten state. ”

“ The rain in its passage through the air takes up carbonic acid, and it is still further charged with it in percolating through the surface soil in which there is decomposing vegetable matter. As the raindrops converge towards some one point, determined by some local accident on the surface, and always in a line of joint, the carbonic acid attacks the carbonate of lime with which it comes into contact, and thus a funnel is gradually formed ending in the vertical joint below. ”

“ The extinct forms in each case are mainly those of the larger animals, which, from their large size, and low fecundity, would be specially liable to be beaten in the battle for life by their smaller and more fertile contemporaries, and less likely to survive those changes in their environment which have undoubtedly taken place in the long lapse of ages. ”

“ They are full of artistic feeling and are evidently drawn from life. The mammoth is engraved in its own ivory, and the reindeer and the stag on their respective antlers. Further researches have revealed the fact that in Auvergne and in the Pyrenees the cave-men ornamented some of their caves with incised figures and polychrome frescoes of the wild animals. ”

“ All these facts can hardly be mere coincidences caused by both peoples leading a savage life under similar conditions. The conclusion, therefore, seems inevitable that, so far as we have any evidence of the race to which the cave-dwellers belong, that evidence points only in the direction of the Eskimos. ”

“ They contained polished celts, flint flakes, rude pottery and human skeletons, along with the broken bones of the pig, dog, horse, Celtic shorthorn and goat. The remains of the wild animals belong to the wolf, fox, badger, bear, wild boar, stag, roe, hare and rabbit. Most of the bones were broken or cut, and the whole group was obviously an accumulation which resulted from these caves having been used as dwellings. ”